SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast
Trainings for Online Coaches & Lifestyle Entrepreneurs
This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?
Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?
Sand Timers on Etsy Brain.fm Flora – Green Focus App
Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
You’re listening to the SweetLife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator, April Beach Hey there. And welcome to this week’s episode. This is number 246 and I’m April beach. It’s so good to talk to you again. Forgive my cracky voice. I just got back from funnel hacking live in Florida and just had a million amazing conversations and my voices hurting just a little bit here.
So I hope it’s not too scratchy as we go through today’s episode, because this is really important. I’m so excited to talk to you about simple ways to plan. And when your week, this is going to be a shorter episode with a lot of information and is jam packed for you. And this is important because of a couple of reasons. First of all,
I know you have so many ideas and so many things going on and you want to win every single week, right? You want to go into that week. You want to feel like you just nailed it, right? When is the last time you actually had a week that it was a Friday night or even a Sunday night? And you’re like, man,
I did awesome that week. It usually actually doesn’t happen as often as we’d like or worst case. If it does happen, you’re always one of those overachievers like me, where we never actually stopped to realize we won the week. We’re just looking to the next week. And so I’m talking to those of you who really truly want to win every single week.
And you want to feel good about that and you want to stay focused. So all of the show notes and everything we’re talking about can be found at episode 246 on our website. And our website is Sweetlife po.com. And if you’re new here, it’s so good to meet you. I’m April beach, I’m a business coach and strategist, an online business architect and an offer engineer.
And I work with experts and coaches and consultants. And I have done this for over 25 years. I help you turn your ideas and your thoughts and your assets into high profit, deep impact business reality. And everything we talk about on this show are tidbits of amazing strategies that our clients get when they work with us. And this show is known for giving business coaching that other two coaches charge thousands for.
So I’m so glad to connect with you. Again, everything can be found by visiting Sweetlife co.com. So let’s lay the groundwork of exactly what you can expect at the end of the show. You can expect that I’m actually going to break down our hyper focused weekly worksheet with you here on the show. I’m going to take you through the steps and really break down how that worksheet is laid out.
This is a worksheet that we save for our clients. Only. We actually go through this process, our clients getting them ready and nailing every single week. And you’re talking clients that make multiple, multiple six figures up to seven figures all the way down to starting entrepreneurs that haven’t even launched. Our first product. These strategies are really important for everybody, regardless of where you are in your business.
And we’re going to go through that process and I’m going to share it with you on today’s show. You’re also going to know how to plan for failure and how to overcome that. And it’s a really simple way as soon as I explain it to you, you’re going to be like, oh yeah, totally. I got it. I’m going to break that down for you.
And then at the end of this show, a very special bonus. I’m even giving you all of the tools that I use. Now. These are physical tools. You guys like tools that you can get off Amazon to help you stay focused. And so that you can keep moving forward and sharing with you. Some of my very favorite apps as well,
so that you can totally win every single week. So again, all the show notes are found@twohundredandfortysixonsweetlifecode.com. And if you’re ready, let’s go ahead and dive into this week show. Okay. You guys were talking about simple ways to plan and win every single week. Now, let me give you a little bit of a backstory. I am highly confident that I have undiagnosed ADHD and I probably have my whole life.
I actually love the way my brain works and I love the way that God made me, but I will say it is a bit challenging to stay focused. If you follow me on Instagram, sometimes you’ll see me. We’re all right, posts that sometimes I will literally just find myself that my brain is so full or the work I’m doing is so hard.
I will just wander around in my home. I have a home office and just start looking out different windows. And so winning the week is really, really hard for me. And so I’ve had to come up with a strategy that could kind of bring me back to earth when I start to float away in my mind during the day. And I own for those of you guys that don’t know me,
I actually own five companies. Two of them are my own and three of them are my husband’s. And so we constantly have a million things going on. The only way we can do this and be very profitable and successful in what we do is to win every single week. And so I’m sharing with you that this is a huge struggle for me. And to be really honest,
let’s keep it really real. I don’t win every single week, but this is a proven strategy that I’ve used in that we coach our clients on to come pretty damn close. And so I want to download you on this this week. I totally get the fact that you have so much work that you need to do and complete as an entrepreneur. And here is what is even harder about being an entrepreneur is that most of you are in that first five years of business.
So in order to complete much of the work you have to do, you’re probably also learning how to do that. So you’re not just having to nail the task at hand. You’re having to figure out how to nail the task at hand and why to nail the task at hand. So when we’re talking about accomplishing one thing, there usually are 20 steps to learn how to accomplish that one thing,
which by the way, this is a perfect reason why you should be in our business coaching programs, because we just give you all the steps and the SOP and the template. So you don’t have to go through that. But most people do go through those processes to do all the learning upfront before the executing. And I understand that it might be a slower process for you.
This is why people tend to start out with in the beginning of the week, all these things that you might want to do, and then you get to the end of the week and you don’t feel as accomplished as frankly, you should, because the reality is is you probably did a ton of stuff. So I’m going to show you and break down our framework that I really needed to create for myself.
And now that we use with our clients so that you can win your week too. So let’s first start with my hyper-focused weekly worksheet. Okay? So this is literally one piece of paper that our clients get every single week. And then they get to meet with Kyle Taylor in our other business dream team, expert coaches that are super killer, awesome people at keeping them focused.
And I’m going to unpack this for you here, but literally as you’re listening to this show, I just want you to imagine one piece of paper. And on this piece of paper, there are just three very simple columns. That’s it? It’s not fancy because if we make this paper fancy, then all of a sudden this paper is going to become a task to complete instead of a tool to help you complete the tasks at hand.
So the very first thing that we do in our hyper focus to week weekly worksheet in our meetups is choosing the number one most important task. Now it’s not rocket science, but the reality is, is what task you choose will affect the whole rest of your week. And so let me give you some tips on how to choose that task. And we like to talk about taking a task that by choosing that task,
it makes everything else easier or obsolete. And that really comes from the strategies, taught in a book called the one thing, which we love and recommend for our clients to read. And so it’s really figuring out what is that one thing that I need to do to make EV that makes everything else easier or obsolete. But now let’s go ahead and take it a step a little bit deeper for you.
Okay. Usually now hear me out, raise your hand. I don’t care where you are. If this is you, usually clients have some really immediate fires to put out and then they have some longer-term business blueprints that they’re building out. So we kind of have these two different categories, like the fire and the blueprint, or for most of our clients,
it’s like money. They need to bring in immediately right now, like their kid’s college payment is due or they have to pay their team or, you know, whatever else they just want to make more money. You know, like in this quarter they haven’t had their quarterly budget yet that they wanted to hit. So there’s immediate tasks and there are farther out tasks.
I don’t care which one you choose in your week, as long as it aligns with the cycle of work that you’re currently doing in your business. Okay. But you need to pick one and only one. All right. So number one, if you’re listening to this right now, just say to yourself out loud, what is the number one most important thing that I need to do or nail or complete or build or whatever the verbiage is this week in my business.
And write that down. Number two, you are going to take a second and you’re going to list out the first three to five action steps to complete that task. So the first three to five things you have to do in order to start the process of completing your number one task, and it could be making a decision on software. It could be signing in and checking my email and cleaning out my email inbox.
It doesn’t matter how small it is. As a matter of fact, the smaller, the better when we’re really getting down to the nitty-gritty of how to complete a task. But I want you to list out the top three to five action steps that complete that task. And there could certainly be more than that, but just list out the first three to five.
And then here’s really where it gets important. Step number three is determining what can get in your way or stop you from completing this task. So ask yourself what is one thing that can totally derail me? What is some reason why I might not be able to complete it? Maybe it’s you don’t know how to use the software that you have to make a decision on.
Maybe it’s that you don’t have somebody to help you learn how to run a Facebook ad. Maybe it’s that you’re afraid and you are your problem. You are your block because you’re having to put yourself out there in a way you never have before, but I want you to really figure out what is that brick wall that is going to come up this week and stand in the way of you being successful at nailing this number one task.
And after you’ve identified your brick wall, I want you to list out a plan that you are going to enact when that happens to overcome it. So you need to determine what can get in your way, and you need to make a plan before it even happens to crush that, and that is step number three. And step number four is blocking out the times or one day on your calendar to focus on this one task.
You can take all of the steps in the world, but if you don’t then plug it into your calendar and designate a time that you are going to plug this in, in actually get it done. There’s a really good chance you’ll procrastinate it. And it won’t get done because in most cases, we still even underestimate the amount of time. It takes us to complete something.
One of my very favorite special business mentors, Carrie Wilkerson says, don’t wait until Friday or Thursday, even to start working on your number one task of the week, do it on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, because inevitably something’s going to happen. Some kid is going to get sick, or the dog has to go to the vet or you have to catch a flight somewhere you weren’t expecting,
or a client needs you for extra help, whatever it may be that is going to happen until we want you to start it earlier in the week and the first three days of the week so that you can win your week. And so let me recap those steps for you really quickly. This is how we complete the hyper-focus weekly worksheet with our clients. Number one is choosing your most important task.
Number two is listing the first three to five action steps to complete that task. Number three is determine what can get in the way and make a plan to get over that. And number four is to block out the time in your calendar in which you will work to complete this task. Very, very simple. And after you’ve done this for your most important task,
then you have permission to go on and follow these same four steps for task number two, and for task number three in each week, but make sure you do the work for each one, starting with number one and make sure that you complete number one before you start moving on to tasks. Number two and three. All right. So now I promised you,
I would share with you some of the tools that we use behind the scenes and some of the things I’ve learned to use over the years just to keep me focused. So these are literally physical tools and some of them are apps and you’re probably going to laugh at me, but they helped me. And so I thought maybe if they helped me that they might help you as well.
The first one is actually a technique and it’s called a Pomodoro technique and Pomodoros were created by Francisco Cirillo. And I’m sure I’m butchering his name because he’s Italian and I don’t speak very great Italian in the Pomodoro technique as a time management method. And it was developed by Francisco in the 18, excuse me, in the 1980s. So it isn’t that old in the word.
Pomodoro actually comes from the word tomato named after like a tomato kitchen timer. I know sounds really silly, but this is how it goes. These are the in order to complete a Pomodoro, basically it’s a way to stay focused. And I will tell you, I have taught this to my teenage boys when they have so much homework and they have trouble staying focused.
If you do Pomodoros, and if you teach your kids Pomodoros, their homework will become so much easier. It’s a very, very simple thing. So the original way to complete a Pomodoro is in six different steps. So, number one, you decide on what you want to do, the task that you want to complete. We’ve already done that with your hyper-focused weekly worksheet,
right? So you have your task at hand. Number two, you set a timer and it could be a tomato timer in the kitchen or an egg timer I use. And this is one of the tools I was going to share with you. I use a sand timer. I have this old sand hour glass with this beautiful blue colored sand in it.
And you can buy sand timers anywhere. You can buy them from local artists in your area. I love supporting local, like glassblowers and local artists in your town, or you can buy them off Amazon, you know, and you can buy them in different time increments. So Pomodoros usually start out in 25 minute increments. If you’re teaching this to your kids,
or if you’re doing this for your first time, yourself started out at a smaller increment of time, like 25 minutes. When I first started doing Pomodoros, I only could do them for 25 minutes. Now my Pomodoros run 45 minutes, but typically set it for around 25 minutes to start. And during that 25 minutes of time, you’re going to work on that task.
Okay. And you are a hundred, a hundred percent focused on that task. Don’t pick up your phone, you know, try not to even get up to go potty. I mean like that is your time you’re in there a hundred percent. And then when that timer goes off, when that timer ends, even when your work is not done, you have to get up and take a short break.
Typical breaks on the normal Pomodoro routine are five to 10 minutes. So you’re technically taking a five to 10 minute break every 25 minutes. Okay. So you can run these. If you’re only taking a five minute break, then you can run two Tom Pomodoro cycles in a one hour period of time. If you have less than three Pomodoros, you know,
in an hour, if you’re getting things done faster than you can group together, work to complete within a Pomodoro and try to run this cycle of Pomodoros at least three times in a row. So try to do Pomodoro cycle maybe in the morning before lunchtime, or maybe another one in the afternoon, after three cycles of Pomodoros, you need to get up and you need to take a bowl 20 to 30 minute break.
So that’s how we run Pomodoros. It’s literally a time chunking and time blocking way to stay focused. But the only way it works is if you make yourself get up, when that timer goes off, regardless of whether or not your work is completed, otherwise subconsciously in your mind, if you just blow through that timer, you’re never going to be able to train your mind to stay focused because subconsciously your mind is thinking,
yeah, she’s not really sticking with the timer and I’m going to be stuck here working on this a lot longer. So that’s why we use Pomodoros. And like I said, it’s a great technique for your teenagers as well. All right. And then the other tool I want to share with you is that Sam timer, or just a regular kitchen timer,
believe me, it is so helpful to you. You can also set a timer on your phone, you know, but it’s just not quite as fun to me. I like looking at my sand timer and actually kind of makes me work faster. When I see this and stripping in there. Number three is the flora green focus app. First of all,
there are tons of focus apps. There’s tons of apps you can download on your phone in order to stay focused and complete the task at hand. One of my problems is that I automatically pick up my phone and literally like my teenage boys. Okay. I’ll just automatically find myself just picking it up out of habit. It has become a habit that I’ll pick up my phone.
So I either have to leave my phone in another room of the house, or I literally it’ll love these little apps where you can grow trees on your phone. So the flora green focus timer, I’ll put a link in the show notes. It’s a free app on apple and iOS device. And there’s other ones similar for Android. And it literally grows a garden.
And the more that you don’t touch your phone, the more your garden grows. And there are also opportunities with this app to actually plant physical trees and to do a lot of give back, which I really love companies that do that. So grab something like that. If you need that, if you’re like me and you constantly are picking up your phone,
don’t use your phone as your Pomodoro focus, timer, use something else like that and use a regular clock or set a timer on your kitchen stove. Or like we talked about use the sand timer or, or an electric timer of some kind. And then the last tool I wanted to share with you is a tool called brain FM. I have shared this tool before on the podcast.
I absolutely love brain FM brain FM is an app that you can play on your phone, or you can play on your desktop computer. And it literally plays, focus, music, relaxing music, sleep music, and the rhythms and the beats within the music are scientifically proven to give the outcome based on what you chose. So when you’re doing creative flow work,
you can literally play music that makes your brain creatively flow more based on tapping into brain FM. You can say, oh, this is a creative flow work time. Or this is a focused work time, or this is a steady time. And they have different types of sounds and rhythms and nature sounds and drums. And it’s absolutely fantastic. Everything from piano to guitar.
It’s my favorite app in the whole entire world. You guys, I will tell you, and I use it all the time. I always have brain FM on. And so those are my tools I wanted to share with you just keeping it real here, sharing with you that I do as well, struggle with staying focused. And I think honestly, every one of us does.
And so I wanted to share with you the hyper weekly worksheet, even though you can’t see it, it’s a part of the process that we roll up our sleeves with our clients every single week, and then share with you the process in order to complete that identify your most important task of the week and how to make sure that you have a plan to always overcome that.
Then nothing’s ever going to catch you by surprise. And then I want to share with you those really practical tools that we use that our team uses. And some of them are silly and funny, but you know what? They totally work. And if something works, we’re going to dive into it and we’re going to share it with you because every single one of us needs to be able to have the leg up that you deserve in your business.
It was really, really funny. I’ll I’ll end with this. I had the privilege of being able to spend about six hours last Saturday with Tony Robbins. And he was speaking live at funnel hacking live, and he was only supposed to speak for a shorter period of time, but he ended up staying with those of us in this room. And it was a really small space,
especially for a Tony Robbins event. He ended up staying with us for almost double the time he was supposed to be there and really went off course of things. He usually teaches to the masses. It was a very special opportunity. And one of the things he said, I found very, very striking. He said, entrepreneurship is the most dangerous sport around because of the fact that if you don’t make it out,
you die. And it was really like, wow, you are right. This is like do or die. Can you try it again? Can you get another life like a video game of your first, second, third, fourth business. Doesn’t make it. Yes, but it’s true. You either sink or swim and you can kind of doggy paddle through this in anything like a silly sand timer or an app on your phone that grows trees.
It has little hot pink and Flores and green birdies. If that’s going to help you, you go with it because you deserve all the support in the world because you are doing something that almost nobody does. You’re building your dreams and you’re helping other people do the same and keeping you focused and keeping you moving forward is how we get that done. So thank you so much for tuning into the show.
I love connecting with you again, apologies for my scratchy voice. Hopefully it will be back before we record the next episode you guys be awesome. And seriously, thank you for sharing the show with friends and connecting with us for so many years. Again, all the show notes can be found by visiting Sweetlife co.com. And this is episode number 246. All right.
Talk to you soon. Bye-bye.
This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?
Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator, a probate Friends. Thanks for tuning. In this episode, you are listening to this sweet life entrepreneur and business podcast. As my friend, Alexa, so beautifully introduced in our intro for this show. I’m April beach,
the host here on the sweet life podcast. And thank you so much for being listeners big announcement. I can’t believe I’ve been forgetting to tell you guys this for the last, actually couple of weeks on the show, I was just named one of the top 50 moms in podcasting. And I just want to say, thank you so much to all of you guys,
because you are the ones that made that happen. So many of you voted so many of you voted for me and voted for this show. And I just wanted to say, thank you so much. I appreciate you guys so very much for being honored out of all the moms to be in the top 50 in podcasting, you know, this isn’t a moms podcast,
but having somebody recognize that it is hard to be a mom and run the businesses that we do and produce a show, especially for so many years consistently. I just want to share that with you guys and share with you. It’s all because of you. And I just thank you so very much. So just had to take a moment to appreciate all of the listeners here on the show.
This is episode number 231, as I said, and today’s guest is somebody who’s going to really help you get over the issues that may be in your way from scaling and growing your business to the next level. Today, we are talking about getting over your fear of hiring people. So first of all, let’s talk about why the heck this is a fear.
What is the deal? What is the matter with us? Here’s the issue as an entrepreneur, we have amazing ideas in our mind. And I’m saying, we, because this is definitely me. You guys, I have struggled with management over the years. It’s not my strength. I have had to work very hard to learn, to become a better leader and manager and delegator.
And so we have all these ideas in our head and we think it’s so much easier. It’s so much faster if we just do it ourselves, but I’m going to tell you that. And I learned this the hard way your business is not going to get to the next level until you know how to create systems delegate. And most importantly, find the right people find the right people.
You know, you need help. You have probably been doing most of the work in your business, and it’s definitely time to move your value time. Your dollar, your time is high is worth higher dollar, and we need to move you to that CEO role and to do so. You need a team or at least one person to begin your delegation process.
But if you haven’t moved yourself out of a mindset blockages to the place of taking action for a variety of different reasons and you know, that it’s time to do so then this particular episode is definitely one that you want to hang out and listen to. You might be saying things to yourself, like I can’t afford to hire help, or I’m uncertain of exactly who to hire and what role they should fill,
or you might be thinking, wow, I don’t even know how to help them onboard. I don’t have any systems in place. This is not just a beginner, entrepreneurial problem friends. We have so many clients that we can’t scale you guys into higher level online services until your delegation is in place until it’s not going to be a bottleneck. When we bring more clients into your business with higher level amazing programs and offers,
this is a problem that my multiple six figure clients face as well. It definitely something, as I said, that I have struggled with over the years and I’ve had to force myself to work through and you’ll hear a little bit of kind of some of my struggles and some of the things I do behind the scenes when we talk about this episode. So if you’re thinking about these things,
you are not alone. That is why we are recording a podcast this week about it. So let me go ahead and introduce you to our guest expert today. Her name is Theresa LOE and Theresa is a leadership and business coach for overworked entrepreneurs. She helps them streamline their operations to build self-managed teams so they can finally get their time back in scale with ease Theresa guides,
people through that sticky transition from wearing all the hats. Raise your hand if that’s where you are right now, to just wearing the most important, how to evolve the CEO in the visionary hat. Nobody else can wear that hat, but we can help you get some of the tasks off your plate with other perfect people. And Theresa specializes in cultivating small,
but mighty teams for online course, creators, coaches and other creatives. She’s amazing. And we’re going to be diving into all of this today here on the show. In addition, as you know, now, Theresa is going to be live with us on Wednesday, June the 16th, taking your team building questions in clubhouse. So join us under our club for this podcast.
It’s called sweet life entrepreneurs, of course, and join us at 12 o’clock Eastern time on June the 16th, 2021. If you’re listening to this show live this week, and we’re going to roll up our sleeves with you. And so what we’re talking about here on the show, then we take it on to clubhouse and we workshop it with you. That’s what we do here on the podcast to really make sure that you are getting implementation for the business strategies here on the show that you know,
you can’t take to the bank. So without further ado, let’s go ahead and dive into today’s episode with Theresa Lowe.<inaudible> Hi everybody. And welcome to episode number 231. My friend Theresa LOE is with us today. And you guys are in for a huge tree, especially if you are to the point where, you know, you’re ready to grow, but you felt like you have this bottleneck.
And the bottleneck is, is that, you know, you can’t do everything. You know, you need to hire help, but there are some fears around that and I can personally attest to these feelings. So I’m so excited that Theresa LOE is here today to help you streamline and scale your business by growing your team by overcoming these fears, Theresa, welcome to the show.
Will you please share everybody your background and a bit about you and how this became your area of expertise? Absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me. So what I do is I help people, entrepreneurs who are overworked, they’re stressed, they’re stretched to the limits. I help them streamline the back end of their business so that they can get their time back.
But also I help them build self-managed teams. And it doesn’t matter if you are just starting out or you are multi-six multi seven multi-age you always want to have your team be self-managed so that you’re not doing all the managing and you can, instead of wearing all the hats, you’re just wearing the most important hat, which is the CEO hat. And so I work with people at different levels because the sooner you can start this the better.
And the way I got into this was I was a co-executive TV producer for nine years for the top organic gardening show on PBS. And as the co-executive TV producer, it’s what we would call in the digital industry and integrator or a chief operational officer. So I was second in command and I had to run multiple episodes at the same time. So it was a very project management heavy,
but at the same time, I had to have teams filming around the country and they all had to be completely self-managed. They had to understand what their jobs were. They had to be able to get all the episodes out the door, which is like little mini launches in our world of digital marketing. And so when I started my own business, six years ago,
it took off really rapidly because I started getting a team right away. And as I started coaching other people in the industry, I realized that team was one of the things that was holding people back, though. We all start out with our laptop and a dream, and we start out doing all the things and wearing all the hats. Well, the sooner you can bring in a supportive team and not just anyone but a self-managed team,
and you can have everything streamlined and clean on the backend that allows you to scale. So I help businesses scale with ease by streamlining and having self-managed team. Wow. And you’re right. I mean, I can imagine just the thought when you said that of all these little mini launches just gave me like a little like, oh my gosh, that sounds,
that sounds terrible. To me, 96, We did 26 episodes a season. So it was A lot. Oh my goodness. So you’re constantly living in this mode of like getting this produced, making sure our systems are streamlined and that people are doing what they’re supposed to be doing at each phase along the way. And I can only imagine how many different moving parts that that would take.
Yes. So you and your history, your experience, your expertise coming into online business totally makes sense. Why you can see things that most online entrepreneurs can’t in a way that it can make it completely easier. And I imagine really simplified compared to your project plans that you were managing and what you were doing. So one of the things that oftentimes we run into with new businesses is the fact that they either don’t know when it’s time to hire,
or they think that it might not be time to hire, but they’re really dealing with some mindset issues around hiring. And we talked about this a little bit behind the scenes and how I personally struggled with this for a very long time. But talk to us about what are some of these mental blocks? What is the mindset of an entrepreneur who’s ready to scale?
Absolutely. And before I even dive into that, sometimes like what you said, how do people know that they’re ready? So let me just address that. You know, that it’s time to get help when you are stretched too thin, you’re overworking, or you’re sacrificing yourself for the business. You’re sacrificing your time, your health, your marriage time with your family,
your weekends, your evenings. We all have these ups and downs in our business where it might grow. And we have little moments of that. But when it goes on for long periods of time, that’s when you absolutely need to get more support and structure in your business because you didn’t start the business to be working 18 hour days. That was not your goal or your dream.
And yet we can get stuck there because we don’t know how to fix this. And one of the things like you said, it’s a mindset issue. And I should also probably say right off the bat, that it doesn’t matter what level we’re going to be talking about, what the different things are that you can do in your business to get help. But it doesn’t matter if you’re just starting out,
there are different ways to hire. So you can hire someone overseas. If you are really strapped on money, you can hire a virtual assistant that’s part time. It can be a working mom who maybe used to work in corporate and has incredible skills, but when her kids are in school or go back to school and aren’t, she’s no longer homeschooling, then she was going to be looking for something that she can do in those other hours.
And so you can bring in someone part-time, but it can also mean when you are a multi-six multi seven multi-asset that you’re bringing in a full-time employee. So what we’re going to talk about here happens at all levels. So the first thing that happens with most people is they get stuck in a solo preneur mindset, and it doesn’t matter how much money you’re bringing in.
You can get stuck thinking too small. And so what I mean by that is that they’ll say to themselves, when my business gets to the next level, then I will bring in the next help that I need in my business. And then my business will allow me to be a higher level CEO. And what I want you to do is flip the script on that.
The truth is that you’re never going to feel ready to take it to the next level that doesn’t just magically happen when you wake up. So you have to start thinking differently. You have to step into your future self and start making strategic decisions. And so the truth is that when you start acting and making decisions as a CEO, then that means you would realize that you need to bring in help.
And that is actually what gets your business to the next level. So rather than just waiting for the next level to happen and then bringing in help, you need to bring in help to get to the next level. Can you Say that again? Yeah. Say that again. This is really please, as you’re listening to this, you guys are, you know,
hit, rewind on this or just hit pause Theresa. I want you to say that again in the reason why this hits home for me and I, I just appreciate it so much learning from you on the show as our listeners are learning right now is because I literally have on a whiteboard. I have my very own little whiteboard of what I’m eating each day and today’s intentions and kind of little notes to myself.
But on that whiteboard, just like two weeks ago, I put on there for my things I need to do each day was millionaire mindset. And I realized this. So I have built a 7, 6, 7 figure business in the past. But this company that we’re working with right now, the Sweetlife company is on our way to seven figures consistently. And I realized that this was,
I was not having that mindset. You guys, this is so important. And since I wrote this on the board, like Theresa is saying, and I’ll go and look at what I’m eating every day. And my goals, my workout plans, it’s all right there. That’s what I wrote. And I think that people think, oh, well, that’s just like a weird note thing,
a weird mindset thing, but it has shifted my activity significantly in my business over the last couple of weeks. So can you say that again? So people hear that. Absolutely. So what we’re talking about here is the be, do have model. And that means that you need to be the CEO of your future and do activities that they would be doing in order to have what your goals are,
your business that you want. Right? So people go, okay, well, how do I do that? Here’s a real, simple thing. Every single morning. When you’re looking at your list, I want you to ask yourself your, to do list. I’m talking about when you’re looking at your to-do list, I want you to ask yourself, what does my business need from me today?
Who do I need to be today? And which activities on this long list are going to get me to the next level that I’m trying to get to, rather than working in those smaller activities, those things that you could actually hire out for it makes you realize that you’re spending a lot of time in the mundane and not in the 20% that moves your business forward.
In fact, you’re so busy. You have like a 1% little sliver that you’re trying to fit. All those CEO activities in and the rest of your day is taken up with other things. So that’s why I started with this one. You want to be the CEO of your future. And so everything that you do needs to be aligned with that so that you can reach your goal.
Yes, Yes, yes. And you should see my notes behind the scenes. You guys like a million million Teresa low notes already from this episode. And I think that, you know, people look to strategies, they look to benchmarks to accomplish. They look to be able to check off this list when in fact doing exactly, as you say is going to then reverse engineer what those activities are each day.
And it’s just such a powerful thing. So I just wanted to pause there for a second. It’s a good one. Okay. Like this is not like, woo you guys. This is like, this is a set solid strategy. That is very important. And I can personally attest to it. So what’s next after we do that. So another belief that can hold people back,
because we want to hit people from all different angles. Maybe that was it. Maybe they were waiting because they’re waiting for their business. A lot of times we’ll say, and this is probably the most common one. They’ll say I can’t afford to hire anyone. Right. It doesn’t matter what level you’re at. You might say, I can’t afford to hire the next person or a high level person.
And so the analogy I like to give here is if I were to come to you April and I were to say, I’m going to open a hotel and I just want to tell you all about it. And you’re like, cool. Tell me all about the hotel. And I said, well, I am going to be the person who checks people in at the front desk.
And then I’m going to help everyone carry their luggage up to their room. I’m going to be the maid. I’m going to do the cleaning. And then when they come back down, I’m going to be at the restaurant and I’m going to take their order. And I’m going to cook the food and deliver the food and then run back out to the front desk for the next person.
You would think I was a nut. And you’d say, you can’t do all those things well, and you can’t grow. And yet that’s what we do in our businesses, because we started with just us. And we were doing all the things and we kept getting spread thinner and thinner and thinner. So when you’re saying, I can’t afford to hire a team,
what you’re really saying is that you aren’t putting yourself first and you don’t want to grow. And what I want you to do is realize that there are different ways to hire at different levels. So if you are just starting out, you can hire someone part-time. If you already have a business, then you can hire someone who is virtual, but maybe works more hours.
And if you’re at a higher level, you can bring in someone as an employee. But the truth is that you can always hire. It’s a matter of finding the right person for the right seat to do the right things so that you’re not wasting your time or your money. And we’re going to talk more about that as we go through the other ones.
Great. Thank you for that. And that’s a great analogy. So after this is established, right, we’ve established that you absolutely cannot grow without help. And this is very important. And certainly there are, some of you are listening who want to be solopreneurs. And this episode probably is not for you when you are ready to grow this, isn’t it.
These are important strategies. So what comes next, Theresa, after we have gotten over these mindset hurdles that we’ve discussed so far, Right? So then the another thing that can hold you back is that you’ll say, well, good. People are hard to find. So let’s talk about that piece right there. Because if you are holding yourself back, because you think you can’t like,
okay, maybe I understand that I will never feel ready. Maybe I understand that I need to hire, but I don’t even know where to start in hiring. And what I want people to understand is that there are good people out there. The trick is that you have to hire the right person by looking at character over resume. So a lot of people teach how to go out and hire,
and they’ll tell you to put a post out a job listing, and then you bring in the person and you’re just looking at their resume to see if they have experienced. And I actually teach hiring in a very different way. I want people to be really, really clear on the type of person that they want to bring in. And I’m talking about character,
what type of person do they need to be? Because even if you only have a team of one other person besides you, you’re building something here. So you want to start doing that right out of the gate. And as you get bigger, you want everyone on your team to have a certain character level. So when I’m hiring, I’m looking at character because the truth is that if I can get someone who’s a go getter,
a problem solver, they’re excited about my work. They’re excited about my mission. I can teach them anything. They don’t even have to have the experience on their resume. So when you are going through the hiring process, be looking for the type of person who can grow with you and can learn, even if they don’t have experience, if you just feel right about them,
because they’re like pumped and excited, then you were hiring more to character than to resume. Hmm. That’s such a good point. And that is, that’s how I hire is with, with an established skillset. But one of the greatest things that I, if I can just share for those of you guys who are listening, one of the greatest things that I have,
I decided to do about 10 years ago, when hiring was, I decided to hire people that wanted to see their future in my business as well, could see their own, what, anything they’d life they wanted to build the time they wanted to be working, the kind of work that they were fired up. And although it might not have been the actual activity that they wanted yet,
what was really helpful and how we’ve grown. Our teams is listening to them, trying to figure out what they want to do. What are their big, huge moonshots? What are their dreams and how can they accomplish those dreams underneath our brand. And I think that that’s why we have had a team who’s worked with us for so long is because of that now definitely skill set as well.
But then I will also pay to have the right people trained in this skill set. So I’ll pay to have the right people in my team learn a skillset that I want them to have, even if they were just totally clueless, because it’s more about the person Kelly Buckner who’s our director of operations is that she is like my dream COO. And I just don’t know where I’d be without her,
but the things she’s doing, don’t always align with her biggest dream, but she knows her biggest dream is within the future of our company. And so just wanting to kind of add that in there, as it is an example, for those of you guys who are listening. Yeah. Having lifelong learners is one of our core values. So we do the same thing.
I have had different members go through courses so that they could get up to speed and it’s a game changer and they feel even more committed to you because now you are helping them grow as a person. So we’re all about growth and stepping into a bigger you. And sometimes someone on my team will find a course and they’re like, I really think this would be helpful.
I would love to take it. And I’m all for it. I will pay for them to take that class. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. And, and I think that what we’re talking about is the future of culture of small and micro sized businesses. And it really is true that so many people look for the skillset we’re in clubhouse rooms.
You and I both are in clubhouse rooms all the time where people are talking about how do I hire and how do I do this? And how do I do that? And they’re getting great advice. Like, we’ll go to this and search for this skillset, but I love a warhead, the conversation we’re having here too, because you can have a person who’s really great at something,
but doesn’t fit into the culture in the future. And, and I think the hardest thing, and I’ll just share kind of this fear since we’re talking about the fears of hiring, one of the hardest things that I had to deal with before I really started hiring for the right person, rather than the skillset was hiring somebody, training them, investing that time.
And then they leave and being so fearful of so much time lost. And I know this isn’t just a, an April problem or a Teresa problem. These are problems that corporations deal with, you know, at this replacement costs in this replacement time. But I just, I remember feeling so fearful of going, gosh, I’m going to invest in this person and they’re just going to ditch me,
You know? Yeah. And will, that can happen. And so one of the things that I work with people when I’m, I’m helping them streamline their business, there’s really three pillars we go through. And it’s the structure, the support piece, which is what we’re talking about here. But what you’re talking about is the scalability piece and that is having contingency plans.
So that’s really having the structure behind the scenes so that if someone steps out, someone else can step in and having systems and processes. So that, that happens. But absolutely, we are also investing part of our heart when we bring someone in because we’re small businesses. So it’s a very small but mighty team. And there’s a lot of heart that goes into bringing someone in.
But here’s the way I like to look at it. When someone is leaving for me, it’s happening for me rather than to me. And I want them to grow and go find a better fit because something that was not a good fit for them. And if it’s not a good fit for them, they’re not going to thrive. Just like if we take a flower and put it in the desert,
that flower might be beautiful somewhere else, but in the desert, it’s going to wither and die. Right? And so if we have someone on our team who really is not aligned with staying with the team, it’s better that they go sooner rather than later. So sometimes we’ll have signs. And that’s some of the things that I coach people through. There’ll be little signs that we missed or along the way that we weren’t really paying attention to.
But when someone is going to leave, I’ve had people leave to go on and start their own business. And I actually give them some of my coaching programs because I want them to do well because we’ve built a relationship. But if someone is stepping out, it’s actually happening for you because there’s going to be someone else that can step in that will take you even further than that person ever could.
What a great set mind you have to read it. Yeah. Mindset is like everything. Yes. Thank you for sharing that. That is an amazing different viewpoint on that. Thank you for sharing that. I think that’s so incredibly powerful. So let’s get back to some of these fears that our listeners might be feeling. Some of these, almost like we could have named this like that,
the four, the five lies you’re telling yourself, but you really need to be hiring by now. You know, what are some of the, what are some of these other thought processes that people need to overcome to really get into this let’s scale? This business let’s hire I’m ready for the next level. Absolutely. So one of the other roadblocks and this actually tends to happen with people who have,
are already a little bit more further along is that they worry that they have to manage the team, or they are currently managing the team. And that’s why I specialize in self managed teams. If you are managing the team, as the CEO, something is wrong, you should never be managing the team. You want to be bringing in people who are in the right seats,
doing the right things. And they are self-managed. So the way that you can tell if you are in the management, rather than the CEO role is if you are helicoptering them, right. We know we all know what a helicopter parent is. There’s also a helicopter CEO and it’s where you’re hovering. Like, are they doing it? Are they doing it?
Are they doing it right? And some of that can be your systems that you have set up. Like maybe, maybe you don’t have touch points where you can kind of keep your finger on the pulse without being in the weeds. That’s something that I help people set up so that they don’t have to be in the weeds to know what’s going on. But sometimes it’s really a matter of learning to let go and let go in the right way.
So what I want you to realize is that what we want to do, what we want to be stepping into is mentoring our team, not managing the team. This means having real clear expectations and results that we’re looking for. So they have a very clear lighthouse and we can have like, you know, 30, 60, 90 day check-ins and be able to say, okay,
you know, we’ve got a little off track here, but as long as they know what lighthouse is, we shouldn’t have to helicopter them. They should be able to figure out how to get there. Does that make sense? Absolutely. Helicopter CEO. I’m definitely, I’m definitely writing that down. It’s so it absolutely makes sense. It was a great analogy.
Yeah. And this is a random question. Just putting you on the spot here for our listeners. Is there a favorite team software for communication that you have that you like to recommend to your clients? Absolutely. So most of the industry uses a sauna and a sauna is great. I have used a sauna, but for project management, I really like monday.com.
That’s actually my favorite. And the reason is because not everybody adapts well to a sauna and monday.com is much more visual. And I find for entrepreneurs, they’re very creative and they tend to have a lot of creative people on their teams and the team. If you have never used any project management software, and you currently have a team, it’s a much easier transition onto Monday than it is to a sauna.
Now that said a sauna is great. I’m not saying a is bad. If you’re already using a sauna, don’t switch. If you love it. And it works for you. Great. But if you’ve never used project management software or you’re intimidated, or your team is Monday works really well. It also is very intuitive. And so it makes it easy for the team to,
to adapt to that. If that makes sense. It does make sense. Thank you for sharing that. Our listeners always want to know everybody’s software stack of what we’re using. And I know a lot of our listeners use Trello air table is where we manage our, our podcast production. But back in the day, we used to use Smartsheet and Gantt charts and all these things that were just not user-friendly at all.
And they were so detailed that we would send it to people and they would just be like deer in the headlights. And they’re just done. What is this? W w what is this? And so I absolutely loved Monday. We’ve had a guest recently who is talking about, is it like click up? I mean, whatever works for you guys. And I think that is the thing here,
but I’d love, you’re an expert in this. And so I love hearing of what, what you recommend and what works for you. So thank you for sharing that. And any, yeah, go ahead. I was just Going to say what’s most important is that, is that you use it. So if you try something and it doesn’t work, try something else because everyone’s brains work differently.
So it’s okay. If something else works for you, right. Perfect. Yes. The great advice. And then any final thoughts to, you know, this hesitation to hiring that you want to leave with our listeners, any like actionable steps. You’re saying, okay, listen, you’re listening to this episode because you know, you need to be hiring,
but there’s a wall. There is a mindset shift that needs to happen, but there are actually things that you, as a leader are putting in your own way. And those are the things we talked about today. Like, I can’t afford to hire a team or what if they leave, or, you know, how do I actually go through the process delegation?
And you shared some really important thoughts that people are already having. I know our listeners are hearing being like, oh yeah, that’s me. I’m thinking this in this process, what do they do now from this episode, from listening to the show, what are some actual actionable items right now where they can leave in that they can start fixing this problem today.
Right? Well, if we circle all the way back to stepping into being a CEO and thinking like your future CEO self, what I want you to do is start doing a time audit. Now, when I say time, audit people’s eyes glaze over and they go, oh, that sounds so corporate. And I have to write down all the things I did all day,
but here’s what I want you to realize. You may think, you know what you’re doing every day, but you’re probably doing some things you shouldn’t be doing, and you don’t even realize it. And you keep thinking, oh, I’ll just do it real quick myself. And it ends up taking an hour, or I can just whip this together. And you end up your whole day is totally shifted because you got down a rabbit hole in Canva or something.
So what I want you to do is to do a time audit on yourself so that you can see, where am I currently spending my time and then put on your CEO hat and take a hard look at that. Are those the things that I should be doing? Which of these things do I know I just shouldn’t be doing, or I’m not very good at them?
Which of these things could I hand off to a current team member or do I need to bring in a team member? So really doing a time audit should be your very first step. And then absolutely every single morning looking at that to do list, do I really have to do these things, which of these things are going to move the needle the most in my business,
which of these things are the moneymakers, which of these things are driving me to my goals and make sure that you’re working on the right things, because we can very easily get busy, busy, busy doing the wrong things, and nothing can slow down your growth faster than doing that. Great. Teresa you’re you are so wise, thank you so much for your leadership in this.
And you coach entrepreneurs who are in six figures, seven figures to eight figures, and you have a couple of different programs. So if you guys are listening here, you know, this isn’t a podcast where we sell you anything. We don’t even accept advertisers on this show. The deal is, is we want you to have the next steps to take action.
So Theresa, can you tell people how they can connect with you and based on where they are, what phase they’re in, what do you have available to get them to that next level with their teams? Absolutely. So where people can connect with me is streamlined and scaled.com, all one word. And on the website, I have information, lots of free resources.
What I have in the way of programs is if you are just hiring your very first team member, or if you have just hired poorly and you need help hiring the next team member, I have a program called team up like a boss. It’s a very low, very inexpensive program that has all my templates and processes my whole methodology for hiring to character first.
Okay. Then the second program that I have is a group coaching program, multi multi figure, and multi seven. And that’s where we streamlined the backend of your business and get your team to be self-managed and make your set you up to be scalable so that you can scale with ease and have your time back. And that is streamlined and scaled. And then I do consulting for multi eight figure businesses who already have major teams and headaches going on,
and they need someone to come in and check out where are the issues? And I do that as well. Theresa, thank you so much. So based on where you guys are, there is a program, there is a solution start like Theresa said with going through your activities today, really focusing on the things that only you, and you can only,
you can do, maybe like me write on your whiteboard or a sticky note or on your mirror and lipstick or whatever it is that you need to be honing in on the millionaire activities in your business. And that is, it starts, it sounds very basic, but this is truly, I can personally attest to this. This is truly where it all starts rolling from there.
And we do have a very special tree for you guys, as you know, that we promote and share in network with you and help you link arms with you and coach you in clubhouse now. So if you’re an active subscriber to this show, that means it drops on Monday. This particular episode is dropping on Monday, June 14th and Theresa and I are going to be live answering your questions workshopping with you,
taking your specific team, building questions, helping you strategize through the struggles or your concerns or your fears or your issues of growing your team on Wednesday, June 16th at 12 o’clock Eastern time. It’s totally free for you to be in there. If you’re really ready to take your business to the next level, it starts by taking action. And that starts by joining us at 12 o’clock on June 16th in our clubhouse room about this topic and to find the clubhouse room,
you can very simply follow our club, join our club, even all you Android users now, by going to sweet life, community.com, again, that Sweetlife community.com. You can talk to Teresa, she’s there for you, and we’re, we’re all here to support you and all of the show notes of course, to reach Teresa beyond. What we talked about here will be in the show notes for this episode.
This is episode number 231. Thank you so much Theresa for your time and your wisdom and your expertise and pouring into us on today’s show. We really appreciate You. Thank you so much for having me. It was fun. It was fun. Thanks.
This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?
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Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator, a probate This week on episode number 229 of the suite life entrepreneur podcast. We are talking with Arnesha Bobo about how to create strategic financial plan for your business. Now, this episode is incredibly important because she actually says it’s 60% of businesses come to her.
Who’ve already been in business for an extended period of time and never have a strategic financial plan. So in this episode, Arnesha breaks down everything that you need to know, and the first three steps to create your strategic financial plan. So the reality is as entrepreneurs, we just kind of get in there and start doing the work, doing the business,
selling the service and miss a lot of foundational steps. But when it’s time to scale your business, or when it’s time to get funding, when it’s time to apply to be a member of, of some sort of a, a board or an organization, people are going to want to see your numbers and you need to see your numbers in order to continue to be profitable.
And then this is the episode where we dive in and help you really start building that out. And so that, you know, the process that you get to go through in order to fully take control of your numbers and your business. So let me give you an indication here of who this amazing woman is. First of all, yes, I met her on clubhouse.
I know don’t laugh at me. We are going to be going live in clubhouse on Wednesday that this show airs again. This is episode number 229, and that is going to be Wednesday, June 2nd, 2021, 12 o’clock Eastern time. Join us in clubhouse because what we’re talking about here, I understand that you might have some questions. So it’s really important that we are then taking this from just a podcast,
this one way conversation and giving you an opportunity to really workshop with our Neesha, to get your questions answered. And so Wednesday, June 2nd, join us at 12 o’clock Eastern. Let me give you an idea of who this amazing woman is. She tells her story. So I’m going to summarize this here, but our niche as a small business CFO in strategic planner,
she works with women, led organizations who are ready to gain visibility in their finances and build a smart growth strategy together with her clients. She focuses on three key areas, capital structure, profitability, and growth planning. She is absolutely amazing. I know that you’re going to love her. And I’m so excited to invite you to tune into this episode. Again,
as we always say, all the show notes can be found by going to Sweetlife co.com. This is episode number 229. So all these links, everything that we’re talking about here are going to be waiting for you on tap. And if you’re a new listener to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, thank you so much for coming. I’m April beach, founder of the suite life company.
And I am absolutely stoked to have an opportunity to welcome you on this show. This show we’ve been named top 50 moms in podcast, but the show isn’t just for moms, all of you are welcome here. And we deliver a business strategies and trainings that other coaches charge thousands for. As a matter of fact, this podcast is part of one of the giving missions of our company.
And we’re pouring into you week after week for four and a half years straight so that you know that you can take the business trainings and strategies that you hear here, here on here, here, here, here on this show, and truly implement them and take them to the bank. So thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you for being a subscriber of this show.
And I appreciate you so very much. Now let’s go ahead and dive into today’s episode. All right, friends. We are joined by my new clubhouse friend. Yes. I know another new amazing club friend that I have met. And so grateful for clubhouse are Nisha Bobo. And she is here because of the fact that she has been in clubhouse rooms with me,
literally drilling down on what women need to know about their money. She is absolutely amazing. She’s a CFO for women. I can’t wait for you to meet her. And today on the show, we’re talking about creating a strategic financial roadmap for your business. And our Nisha is going to walk you through the steps in order to do that. So, or Nisha,
thank you so much for coming to the show. Thank you for spending time with me here and all the time that we’ve spent together on clubhouse. And tell us a little bit about you and what you do. Yes, absolutely. I help women become better leaders in their business by improving their decision-making women are the fastest growing demographic of business owner. Yet they are the least paid.
They’re not growing in other industries. And most importantly, they’re not getting access to funding that they need to help either grow their business or expand in other markets. So I help women. We’re all things, money with all things, money. I love that. Okay. So reminds me. I was actually in a meeting a week ago with an author of a book it’s about the new entrepreneurship and he was talking about women and minorities and immigrants as well coming in,
and that they don’t have funding, but this gentleman who funds a lot of regular business was saying, they’re looking at ways to create new programs to do that. So just decide now, but it was very interesting to hear and just triggered me to say that because I do think that the funding hopefully is coming around, but like what we’re going to talk about today,
there’s a lot of things that every business owner needs to do to get their ducks in a row before anybody will even pay attention to fund them. And those are the things you’re going to share with us today, but tell us a little bit about you and you know, really how you got into this, why you started your company and your, your journey about getting yes,
absolutely. I have a 14 year corporate accounting career. So I’ve worked with very large companies. I’ve managed multi-billion dollar portfolios. And when I first started my company, I was at a nine to five or so I was a part-time entrepreneur, like many businesses starting out. So I would, you know, work my full time job, my nine to five.
And then I would go home and work on my business, five to nine, how I became a consultant. I actually work with the procurement department for some corporations. And if you are familiar with the procurement department, that’s the department you go through as a business owner to get corporate contracts. So you have to go through a procurement process, you have to register your company with them.
You have to submit financial information, you have to apply. And then you start bidding on different contracts that they have. So you can do this at a corporate level, government level, city, state, and federal, but I was at the corporate level and I noticed a lot of businesses did not qualify to do business with these corporations because their business head,
no proper foundation. So they were not set up correctly. They didn’t have access to financial information because they only met with their tax accountant once a year. So I found myself a lot of days working with business owners to set their foundation up just so they could do business with that corporation. I am not a gatekeeper. If there’s an opportunity for me to help you come on and come on,
but I want to make sure that everything is done correctly. So that’s how I started my business is helping other small businesses get into these corporations to do business with them. And then it started to grow from there. I later joined a national organization for women. It’s called<inaudible> the national association of women business owners. And I joined to become a better business owner because I had that corporate mindset and everything was structured,
but I wanted to learn how to be a business owner. So I joined this organization, you know, attended some events, was able to do a couple of reasons, patients or answer questions that event. And I caught the eye of the president at no idea that she had watched me or she, you know, I was on her radar. Well,
she asked me to join the board. And as I actually, yeah, I joined the board as a financial secretary. So I was responsible for doing all of the financial reporting for the organization at our chapter level. And I started working with a lot of female owned businesses. So that’s how I, you know, that’s why my core are women because I was able to help them birth.
And I’m a woman. I love women. I love to see women win mommies, aunties, everybody. I want all women to win because I coming from corporate America and just seeing the huge disparities between men and women, the earnings, all of that, I was like, oh no, any opportunity I can help women. I’m going to do that.
So that’s how I kind of got started. And I actually left the organization because relocated to Atlanta. So I’m in Atlanta, Georgia, the home of entrepreneurship. And I actually joined another business organization. It’s called the Atlanta black chambers. It’s a chamber dedicated to helping black businesses grow coffee. I have the executive director of course started. So, you know,
do a lot of great, amazing things. Patients with the chamber got into leadership. So I chaired a couple of committees. I co-chaired another counting the financial services committee at one event. One of my chamber members actually invited me to speak at an event because she was a program manager for a city accelerator. And I was able to get a contract with the city.
So I got my first contract sole source. I didn’t have to go through a bidding process. And that’s one of the longest standing contracts that I have. So now I teach a financial consulting to new and small businesses here. Wow. That is an amazing story. I mean, your story is just amazing. There’s so many things that people can take away from that story alone.
And I think that like, it is remarkable. You are clearly very good at what you do, but I love the part of it where you just did it and people recognized it because you did the work and people recognize you for just like being true, doing your skill, doing the work and connecting important into others. Yes. Thank you. If I was building a personal brand and didn’t know that I was building a personal brand.
Yeah. You had no idea. That is so amazing. That is so cool. Congratulations to you. And I hope our listeners are like, okay, like I can do this. Like there, isn’t always some big, huge, hidden strategy behind it. It’s just leading with what you know, doing good work and pouring into people and you get recognized and you get elevated.
You get brought up. Yes. We could just end the podcast. This is today’s lesson, boys and girls. Oh my gosh. Okay. So you currently teach businesses on a regular basis. How to get their financial Jackson row, how to get their foundation in place. You do it on clubhouse all the time. If you guys are not following our Nishawn clubhouse,
please make sure you do that. Is it our Nisha Bobo? Yes. We’ll make sure that’s in the show notes for you guys as well. Plus of course our Nisha is going to be going live with us in our suite life podcast, clubhouse room though, week this show drops and you get to connect with her even more directly and bring your business questions.
So that’s just a side note, those of our listeners that know that, and can’t wait to have this conversation in a live setting. So you can get a chance to really workshop with our listeners too. So what we’re talking about today is really creating a roadmap for your business. And you have a method, you have a way that you bring businesses through this and it’s so important.
And when you explained it to me, kind of behind the scenes, before we started recording, I was like, oh yeah. Oh yeah, that’s really, really good. So today you’re going to guide us through really the first three steps of that process of that business roadmap. So why don’t you go ahead and get us started here for those of our listeners.
You guys should have a pen and paper, please make sure you’re taking notes or if you’re driving or at the gym or wherever, you know, you can always come back and replay this. So what is the first thing businesses should do in order to really start creating a great foundation? Thank you. Yes. So the very first step is creating a solid foundation.
I work with hundreds of business owners a year and they, most of them just get into it. They just get into business. You just started doing it. There was no business plan. There was no page today. Your business is not registered. You don’t know which state you’re at should pay taxes. And like they’re all over the place. So I’m going to help you right now,
create a foundation, a solid foundation. You need a business plan or some type of strategic plan, right? We’re known in our industry for strategic planning. That’s our jam. We do strategic planning from the top to the bottom of your organization. I have a top down approach. You need a plan. The very first step of creating your foundation, whether you are a new business established business,
you’ve been in business 15 years, every single year, you should have a plan. And that plan should start with your vision. What is your vision for your company for this year short term and long term, right? Where do you want to grow this year? What do you want to accomplish this year? What do you want to improve this year?
What do you want to be this year? What is your vision? Create a vision and stick to it because you are the leader of your organization and your team is going to follow you in your leadership style. They need to understand your vision. They need to understand where you’re trying to go. I had a meeting this morning with my marketing strategies that I just hired.
And I sent her my strategic plan and she was like, oh my God, I’ve never had this happen before. Right. Never had a strategic plan. It lists our goals, our objectives, everything. I want her to have clear direction on what I need her to do for my company. I absolutely love that. Okay. I totally geek out on that whole entire thing.
As you know, like we do strategic planning when it comes to drill out Venus suite of offers. And we were talking about this behind the scenes too, but like the whole financial side of it is so big and there’s so much more of a process that people don’t even talk about. And I’m not an expert in that I don’t, you know, build out their,
their financial plans. And so that’s why, like, I’m just geeking out on the whole strategic plan thing. So let me ask you a question here. And this is, I think a lot of our listeners, we have businesses that are scaling, who are listeners. We have brand new businesses when we are talking about guilt or like, this is a problem.
Like when is it usually with, and sadly, this is the case. Although it shouldn’t be entrepreneurs, aren’t very proactive on the things that, you know, we really just don’t want to do that. Isn’t fun. It doesn’t feel like we’re creating anything. So obviously they need to do this in the very beginning. Every business should be doing this in the very beginning,
but honestly, how many businesses do you guys have coming at you that have been in business for a long time? And they don’t have any of this? I’ll say about 60% because, and the reason why they don’t have it in a place, like I said, when they start off, it just started doing business. There isn’t a roadmap in place.
You just started doing business because you are good at it. Or you don’t really think it through or plan it out. And typically when you start to hurt in business or something goes wrong or not making the money yourselves or not increasing in your conversion rates are low. There’s a problem somewhere. And you need to just pause, pause so we can figure out what’s not working where the issues are and create a plan to fix that issue or implement some type of solution that will fix that issue.
But if we don’t know what the problem, if you don’t have visibility on the problem, and you’re just trying to figure it out, that you’re going to continue to build yourself in a hole. So you need to just stop and figure out what’s going wrong. I’ll use myself as an example. I struggled with creating content because as an accountant, when I first started my business,
I sounded really technical. My language was very technical and my content was not combining. I hired a content strategist. I was like, because look, I have tried Facebook. I’ve tried Pinterest, I’ve tried this. I’ve tried that. And I’m just not seeing the conversions or the view. I’m making the money. That’s not the problem. It’s the view.
And she was like, oh, this is the issue. And this is the issue. But I had to hire an expert to tell me where the issue was. And I was like, oh, okay. So now we have a map in place. Now she’s like this. We start here to create this and you create this. And this builds on that.
And then boom, there’s that content static every over, like over the next, maybe seven days, I saw a drastic improvement on our views. I was like, okay, thank you. I love that. Okay. So you guys are listening. If you haven’t done this yet, like, don’t feel bad. Don’t feel guilty, but it’s probably time to stop.
If you don’t have this financial foundation as our Nisha is saying and place, all right. So after this strategic plan is created, what comes next? What’s step number two, that people should really start diving in to understanding. So step number one is creating the foundation, solidifying your vision. After you create your vision, you also need to create core values and smart goals.
Your core values. You know, this is how your compass is what your company believes in. This is what you support. And this is how you pretty much operate. We have six core values in our company, and I always work with a business to create them when we’re going through the strategic planning process. So step one, creating a foundation, eat a vision,
core values, and smart goals, right? And a lot of times with the goal planning every year, every January, we all get excited. We’re going to create these 15 goals and we want to achieve all these things. You have to structure your goals and organize them, right? You don’t need 10 goals. Maybe you just need three, three short term,
three long term. That’s six that’s enough for the last year, the entire year. So creating those goals is enough, right? So step one, foundation, step two. We’re going to get into business performance. You need to analyze and assess your business. So once we solidify your vision with your company, the next step is I’m going to do a full,
I’m going to analyze your business top to bottom. What’s not working in operations. What’s not working in finance. What’s not working with you. Hiring people. I’m looking for missing processes. Do you have a hiring process in place? Because if you don’t, you’re probably not compliant with the state you’re operating in, right? Do you have a business budget in place?
Do you understand how much money you’re projected to make? How much are predicted to spend and your contribution margins? Do you understand your profit margin? So we get into some KPI reporting. I’m a numbers person. So I’m going straight for processes and then numbers. So making sure you have bird’s eye view and business owners, they typically only want to know how much money they may,
how much is left over and how much they only taxes. There are so many other moving it’s telling me this. I’m fine. Just tell me the rest I’ll be on. I’ll be on a beach somewhere. Yeah. Just give me those three things and we’re good. Oh my gosh. Those three things are, there are still other factors that you need to understand total income,
right? What are your top revenue performing items? If you offer, if you have a full product landscape by April, you work with businesses to build out their product suite. So business owners need to know what are their top performing, you know, products or startups. Don’t just dump everything in sales, right? That you need to see everything listed out expenses.
What are your top expenses, right? How much of your expenses contribute to your labor? What are your labor margins? If you have a team, how much is your team costing you? Right. I know for a fact on a 70, 30, no product that I released is going to cost me more than 30% of their product so that I can remain 70% profitable.
That’s how we build our service landscape. I’m not reducing my total projected income or increasing additional costs. Say that again. That was so powerful. Can you say that again? Cause I want to make sure our listeners did not just pass that up. Okay. So listen to this financial structure for your products. Okay. So what is your, what is your,
when are your numbers right? 70 30. So that means out of a hundred percent, it only costs me 30% to produce my services so that I walk away 70% profitable. That’s a very small conversation around pricing, which that’s a whole different conversation, but you need to understand your profit margins going in. How much is it going to cost you to produce this product or service?
How profitable do you want to walk away be? So I know every time we create something, whether it’s a bootcamp, a group coaching program, authoring a book, whatever it is, we’re going to walk away. So many percent profitable. If I cannot do that, I need to restructure the cost. Amen. Yes. And this is a thing,
and I was actually speaking to a client about this this week. And we talk about it all the time. Like in your clubhouse rooms, I was in there and you were talking about this. The thing is, is that when we’re, most of our listeners obviously are online, businesses are offline going online. And so what I tend to see is that they purchase so much software and they have no idea how much money they’re spending on an ongoing basis as well,
and what they actually need to use to produce that particular offer or a product. And so this whole entire conversation is, is just so helpful. So thank you again for being here, talking my best today on the show. Okay. So know your numbers and like down and dirty, what are the numbers that people need to know? So knowing your total revenue,
knowing your total income, how much money did you make, even if you use a lot of payment gateways, like, Hey, Pao, Stripe, square, collectively, you need to know your total income, right? You need to know number two, your total expenses, how much money are you spending? Like you just mentioned, April people use all of these tools.
We downsized all the time. I have what’s called shared services. So if we are creating digital products or consulting services, I want to utilize the same system. So I can just do a percentage allocation across the board. I’m not going to implement a ton of systems because that affects my profit margin. So total expenses, total income, and your bottom line.
The difference between your total income and total revenue is your bottom line. Are you operating at a net loss or are you operating at a profit? You need to monitor that every single month because that’s going to affect you at tax time or when it’s time to seek capital when it’s time to grow. When it’s time to have the bit management conversation where you want to apply for funding,
you need to understand your bottom line and all the factors that positively or negatively impact your bottom line. Yes. And a lot of businesses right now have also spoken to clients about this. As far as that, the relief loan, like the COVID relief loan. Like if you don’t have these numbers and you don’t know if there’s been a loss or a decrease or whatever,
then you know, they aren’t there. Aren’t qualifying for some of this really powerful cash injection that they can get it. They weren’t in 2020, they can get into their business. So, so important. And then KPIs, can you really like dumb that down? Explain that. So people really understand how to look for this in their own business. Yes.
KPIs are key performance indicators. So these, there are ratios to help you analyze areas of your business. Like your have revenue KPIs, you have labor KPIs, you have production KPIs. So when I say KPIs like they’re in ratio form, so you’re just taking numbers and providing them over to percentages. My favorite is revenue growth. How is your revenue growing period to period when,
I mean, period, every single month is your revenue growing month, month, month, per quarter, or a month to a year. So how is your revenue growing while your a monthly recurring revenue, each department of your business is going to have their own KPIs? So you have financial KPIs, which I monitor. You have operational, you have logistics depending on the nature of your business,
traffic to conversion. So there are different types of numbers. It depends on your operations, you know, marketing, they’re going to look at visits to conversions or visits to sales, to figure out what’s working. What’s not working in this particular marketing strategy or marketing campaign. So just understanding how to analyze your revenue and your income, or all of your numbers for your business in a percentage capacity.
And don’t worry has a guide. We’re going to make sure that you have so that you can really start diving in this and make sure that you guys are taking action. As you know, here in the show, like we’re going to give you the step-by-steps business trainings here, things you can look for, but then, you know, it’s your job to go and implement this.
And so our Neesha has a guide. That’s going to really start walking you through that process. We’ll make sure that you have a link to download after we’re done chatting here. Okay. And then what is this third step that you recommend businesses go through? The third step is creating a long-term plan. So once you have you slip out of your foundation,
you’ve created a operational plan for the year. It’s time to think long-term and long-term in the, the mains of everything, right? Capital are you, do you have the right capital structure? Do you have the right money in place? You have access to excess capital like lines of credit and business credit. Are you able to grow that you have debt in place?
Are you able to properly manage your debt? One of my clients incurred a lot of debt over the last few years. So we put together a very aggressive bit management plan to reduce their bit because it was affecting her bottom line. So you had this heavy umbrella of debt over your business. And if you’re in the rat race every single day. So being able to create opportunities to reduce that debt without hurting,
you know, operations, too much team, your team and operations capacity planning, what is your team doing now? What can I do better in the future? And how long can they do it? Right. We have a lot of technology that’s coming down the pipeline. A lot of AI, what can be automated in your business for us? We actually started out as a bookkeeping firm.
So we started out providing bookkeeping services and we’re quickly able to scale up to CFO services because a lot of bookkeeping services offer automated bookkeeping. So we’re doing the day to day, that can be done automatically. You don’t have to pay a lot of money for that, but the strategy and the planning you’re going to spend money on because a computer can’t tell you that you have to have somebody to sit down and read through the numbers with you and read through your operations and fill in that.
So number three is definitely planning for the loan term. Wow. What a powerful thing. I mean, that must feel so good for businesses to have you go in there now probably virtually and be able to help them unpack what they want and hand them a strategic plan to get that. I mean, just like for a second, you guys listening, like imagine what that would feel like to you to have somebody like our Neesha come in there and unpack all of this for you and what you’d walk away with.
And no, I don’t get like commissioned for making sure. She’s just saying, you know, like imagine how much that would take off your plate of wondering what you’re missing. See, here’s the thing I find that most business owners worry so much about the things they don’t know that they’re missing. They don’t even know specifically what they’re worried about, but they know that they don’t know enough about certain things that they don’t know enough about.
And they know that they’re there in sometimes business owners, even clients of ours, who’ve been in business for years and years. It’s like, they’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. And that is no way to run a business, especially creating a business. That’s going to skill you into the future. So I love everything that you’re saying. And it’s so incredibly important that businesses go through this process.
And after they figure out their long-term plan, you guys are Nisha has a full guide. That’s going to go into detail, but just really, really like top level. What are the next couple steps that people go through in this process? The next step will be assessing your tech deck. So what is what tech interviews is using? You know, do you have outdated processes?
Do you have outdated systems? A lot of times we found that companies that have smaller team, they have a team size. That’s unnecessary because too many people are doing too many manual things. There’s no automation in place. There’s no, there aren’t any sequences set up to trigger this action. When you have poor outdated processes, you have unhappy employees, you have a lot of manual work.
That’s costing you a lot of billable hours for your company. And most importantly, you have people doing a job that could be automated. I was an unhappy employee in one of my corporate dives because the tech was just so old and it was so manual. And I was just, this is, I felt like I wasn’t living up to my potential because I was trying to figure out how to automate this process instead of doing the actual job.
And you don’t want unhappy employees, you want people that are happy to do the work for you to help you in your organization. And they can help take things to the next level. Asset protection is another one, making sure your intellectual property is protected. I just had a meeting with my attorney because we were talking about some programs I want to roll out.
And she was like, make sure you send the prelim over to me so I can look at it to make sure it’s part of our IP deck. So making sure that your IP is protected and then last but not least for my small businesses tax planning, please, please, please free tax plan. That’s why no longer a number is important. You should not wait until tax season to know your numbers,
especially in a year like this. When we had an administration shift, we are in a pandemic there a particular way. Things have to be calculated. Are you ahead of the game? Are you being reactive or are you being proactive? I would prefer for you to be proactive when it comes to the pre-tax planning phase. So those would be the remainder of the steps in the rule.
Wow. Okay. So today we talked about creating a strategic financial roadmap for businesses and you are the founder of CFO for women and everything was so informative today. You’re always just giving so much not, you know, we say that I’m also giving so much value. Well, yes, it was incredible value. But today I just appreciate you so much.
And you do this in clubhouse as well because you really, really dialed it down to the tactics. It’s not just all about idea or strategy or what needs to be done, but it’s going through the tactics. And so I appreciate your time so much on the show today and how can people find you? And we’re going to make sure the links to your download are in the show notes as well.
So if you’re driving, you can’t write this down. No worries guys, but how can people really connect with you more? Absolutely. You can always find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at CFL for women. Those are the handles for those three platforms and I’m on clubhouse ads. Our mission speaks up there every Monday at 3:00 PM. I am also there some Tuesday evenings hanging out with April,
but I’m always there. I’m just slide in my DMS. If you have any questions, I’ll make sure you get access to the right resource. If you are in the city of Atlanta and you are a new or established business, but you need some additional support, you can contact the urban league, the entrepreneurship center and register for one of our free accelerated programs.
This is about $20,000 worth of free training for you and your business. I am one of the coaches for their program. So please come out and receive the assistance. That’s why you can find me. Wow. Yeah. Luckily Blog that goes out every first, Monday of the month, it’s called your bottom line. So you can go to www.cfoforwomen.com and click on blog.
It’ll take you straight to our blog. So we upload a blog every single month to help you get access to resources and strategies for your amazing, amazing, thank you so much for being a guest on the show. And this is Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, episode number 229. So everything that our Nisha just said, and you weren’t able to jot that down will also be found@sweetlifeco.com
click on the podcast. And this is episode two 29, and don’t forget to join us. Live in clubhouse under the sweet left entrepreneur’s club on Wednesday, the week this show drops, I’m looking at my calendar right now. I think we said, that’s going to be June 2nd, Wednesday, June 2nd, at 12 o’clock Eastern time. And Arnesha and I are going to be in there taking this conversation a bit further and strategically there to make sure you guys are getting your questions answered.
So thank you so much for joining us Arnesha. I appreciate your time and expertise. Thank you so much for having me
This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?
Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator, a probate. So two 20 here on the suite live entrepreneur and business podcast. I’m April beach, your host, and I’m super glad to be chatting with you. And yet another week here on the show,
this is episode number 220, and I can’t wait to dive into today’s topic. This is one of those ones where behind the scenes here, I was taking so many notes based on what our guest expert was teaching today. So there’s just gold inside this episode, as we hope to deliver to you within every single episode. First of all, before we get started,
if you’re new to listening to the show, thank you so much for tuning in here. We also go live and talk about the podcast and take your questions every single Wednesday at 12 o’clock Eastern time on clubhouse. So if you are not yet following me on clubhouse, please do so. I would love to connect with you. We can really dive in and roll up our sleeves regarding your business questions.
Every single Wednesday, faithfully at 12 o’clock Eastern time. And my handle is at April beach on clubhouse. So I would love to see you there also, if you’re new to listening, or maybe it’s been a while since you’ve tapped into this important powerful resource, we have our lifestyle entrepreneur roadmap quiz, and this is based on my start to scale up system.
It’s a totally free tool. If you’re a listener to this show, you can go and take a very short quiz, just six simple questions. And it’s going to tell you what phase of business you’re in and based on the phase of business you’re in, we give you an exact checklist of what you should be focusing on and what you should be working on to scale your business,
or just really get your business to that next level. And you can take that quiz any time you can go back and take it again and again, by visiting sweet life co.com forward slash quiz, or you can simply text the word quiz to the number (805) 254-0880. And we’ll send you a link to that. So those are our free tools. In addition to all the gold,
you’re going to hear her on the show that I wanted to make sure that you have upfront so that we can keep your business implementing as we move forward through the entrepreneur podcast here. So I appreciate you listening to this show. This is what we’re talking about today. So let’s set the stage. This show is great for those of you guys who are in the first three stages of my start to scale up system.
So that’s based on the quiz. So if you’re in phase one, two or three, this is a great episode for you to listen to. If you’re in phase four or five of my start Taylor scale system, you’ve nailed this strategy. And so I recommend going to find a different podcast to listen to that applies to your stage of business. I want to make sure that I value your time so much.
And the strategies we’re talking about on today’s show are for those people in the first one, two or three stages of the start to scale up system. So what we’re talking about here is how to literally write emails that are so good. They lick the screen. You’re going to be mind blown about what you hear on today’s show. This is for small businesses who you either currently use email marketing.
You’re not sure if you’re doing it right, or you’ve never used email marketing before, and you want to learn how to leverage email marketing in your business. Email marketing is an important way for you to connect with your warm audience. It’s also important for you to hold an ongoing conversation and to increase your sales. However, most businesses flop when it comes to writing emails,
it’s truly because it’s, it’s actually a skill it’s not as easy as you would think that it would be in your emails really need to compel your audience. So in the show we have Kate Doster, who’s a copywriting expert. She’s going to break down the process of writing great emails in an ethical way, by wooing the hearts of your ideal clients and their wallets open.
At the end of this episode, this is what you can expect. You’re going to know what is the difference between a good email and a great email. You’re going to know how to use calls to action correctly in your emails. And you’re going to know the process of writing emails that convert. So let me tell you who is here today. She is absolutely amazing.
Kate Doster is the host of the inbox besties podcast. Creator of love your list. 2.0 email marketing mega course, it is dangerously obsessed with helping ethical entrepreneurs carve out their slice of the interwebs by winning the hearts and wallets open of their small, but mighty audiences. Thanks to funny bell marketing and easy yes, many offers. So that’s important as we went through our bio,
her bio here, that what Kate’s bio says is she helps you. Even if you have a teeny tiny small list, increase the engagement in the sales based on your list. That was one of the key things. When I was reading her bio and why I asked her to come on this show because listen, you guys, you only need a hundred true fans to build a great business.
That’s what it starts with these huge audiences. I mean, this can be an illusion. So those of you that don’t have huge lists with 10, 20,000 people on it. This podcast is great. And it’s also for those people that do have huge email lists. And perhaps you are failing at connecting well with your list. Kate believes you don’t need to bleed the alphabet or be a dirty rotten spam face to write emails,
adult subscribers, and to taking action gobbling up your paid offers like candy or kale, if that’s what you prefer. So let’s go ahead and dive into today’s podcast. All of the show notes can be found by visiting Sweetlife co.com simply click on the podcast button. And this is episode number 220<inaudible> All right, you guys, I am joined by Kate Doster and she is going to give you the complete strategy that you probably didn’t even know.
You’re actually missing to write amazing emails because what she teaches, what she talks about, isn’t just the fundamentals. It isn’t just like how to section out the content in your email. She literally teaches you how to write emails for so good people lick the screen. And that is her quote. I stole that from her to name this podcast. So giving credit where credit is due,
Kate, welcome to the show. We are so excited to have you here tell everybody about your superpower in your company. Sure. So I’m Kate Doster of Kate doster.com and hosted the inbox besties podcast. And my super power is really being able to help people. Not only feel like they can do anything, but actually give them the tools to get them there.
I think that there’s a lot of people that kind of hype you up and make you feel amazing. But then when they’re like, but how do I do X there’s like, go figure it out. But like, no, like we do the whole approach because our mission is to put money in the hands of good people so they can do good with it.
So our business is primarily a digital course business. I am extremely selective about the one-on-one clients that I take on, but primarily it’s courses digital products. We just we’ve got to help the good people out there. Right? And you teach people how to like create these insane bodies of copy that totally bring to life what it is that they do, their super power.
And there’s such a disconnect. I’m so excited to have you on this show. I need to give Angie true blood, our favorite person credit for connecting you with us. And when Angie was like, okay, this is an amazing guest for you. First of all, anybody Angie sends to me, I know it was just an amazing guest, but then I saw your,
your topics. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, yes. Emails that not only like convert, but emails that give an experience. So let’s dive right in and talk about one of the things you said behind the scenes, as I was getting ready here and taking my notes for what we’re going to talk about today is you have kind of like this four things that you go through.
And the first one you talk about is something that really other copywriting teachers don’t, and that is all about mindset. Talk to me about mindset and how that plays a role in copywriting. Sure. So like I said, good people do good. Most good people have very bad associations with things like selling. They don’t want to be annoying. They don’t want to be lumped in with a spammer faces.
Are there really bro Hames as we call him the world, he’s our arch rivals. He has a whole voice as he does. So because of that, they tend to really freeze that when it comes to emails, you know, Oh, I don’t want to be annoying or I don’t want to be spammy. Oh, you know, like I haven’t emailed them in three months.
So now they are literally psyching themselves out because either they feel bad, they feel guilty. Everyone’s been telling them everywhere. Like you need to have an MLS. Why don’t you have an email list, email, your email list, you dummy. So they get all up in their heads and they do no thing because everyone’s been on the receiving end of really bad emails.
But here’s the thing. The sheer fact that you are having this thought of, I don’t want to annoy people. I don’t want to be a spammer means that it is physically impossible for you to be there. And it is physically impossible for you to write one because the really broad themes as a world who are those farmers, they do not care. The fact that you care proves that you are going to send them high quality stuff.
So who guys think you already did it? And when I talk to people like 100%, it is always, Oh, I feel like, or I think it’s like, so it’s not truly the mechanics. It’s I need to get your finger to, to hit the sand on the good old convert kit, Right? Oh my gosh. Okay. Like we can just end the podcast right there.
Like, okay, you need to fix your mindset. You’re amazing. You’re not like a douche bag. You’re going to send grace. So I think that’s so cool. Okay. And then the next thing that you talked about is, you know, being on your list is a privilege. Let’s talk about that mindset all together. What do you mean by that?
Okay. It is a two side of the coin. One. When you realize that people are honestly lucky to get your enthusiasm, your encouragement, your knowledge, your expertise, they are lucky to be there. So all of a sudden that scarcity mindset of, you know, if I send a newsletter, a hundred people are going to unsubscribe. So no,
like I don’t have this mystical thousand number. Like who cares the people on the other end of the screen, do not know if they are one of, 100, one of five or one of 10 million. They have no idea when it is our mission to help you need to help regardless of that number. So when you’re like, Oh, bring it on my list as a privilege.
And somebody sends you a nasty email back, you laugh at them and then you kick them out. You’re like, no, like literally I send a lot of emails. I send a lot of what’s called sales emails. I got two last year. One was because I said home slice. And the other one I think had, but face in the subject line,
I literally went to go see what these people had signed up for. I’m like, how did you get here? I was mad at my landing pages, my gatekeepers, my content like allowed you in here. So when you go out with that mindset of being on my list is a privilege. Not only are you not going to care about the heaters because you’re like,
whatever, Sally, there’s a way more people for me to help. I hope you go find your own teacher is that, then you’re going to have a plan for it. So it’s a two side of the coin, like on next again, you’re allowed to have that human experience. If somebody sends you a me an email back, but then you get to laugh at them and be like,
man, I wish I had so much time that I could sit there and complain and whine and have my day ruined by somebody else. But like I’m too busy out there making a difference. So I can’t, Well, you just like blew my mind. That is so profound because I mean, what are the things we’ve talked about in the, the last four years is having somebody on your list as a privilege and,
and treat them with care and all these things. But what you’re saying is just so true to every single thing that I know, I feel as an entrepreneur bit like basically, like, I feel like you have just given people permission to be like, you are valuable. What you say is worthy. Your content is amazing. If somebody doesn’t resonate with it,
see you later celly, like you said. And then the next thing I said was really important, which we can even get into in this episode. Was that the gatekeepers is that making sure that your opt-ins, we’re totally not going to go there. Cause we could do a whole show on this, but making sure your opt-ins disqualify people at the same time as they qualify people,
the right people, that connection that you meant, I’d love that you mentioned that too. Okay. So when we’re writing email, the next tip kind of mindset strategy that you have is, is really treat people like people. I know I’m literally doing the shocked face. You guys can hear it. So again, because good people doing good things, right?
No one wants to be a spammer face. You tend to forget the, like there’s another person on the other side of this screen. So like how many times have you gone to like check your email, but then like the dog knocks over the plants and I need to clean it up. And then by the time you get back to your email, it’s like the next day or two days later.
So like, if you have this amazing product, you have this amazing coaching program and you only email people about a once you’re being the jerk. Ironically, it is the other way around because what if they just didn’t check their email that day? Now they are never going to know same thing with, and I know that this goes beyond the scope of this particular lesson,
but same thing with launching, like when you’re actually doing a launch. Yeah. If all of your emails are, you’ve got one day left, you got five minutes left and all of those are awful. Awful. You do need to send things about time limits because people do need to know. So I have nothing against timers, but you need to understand what actually goes through a person’s brain.
People are not logical. And when my students kind of grasp that around their heads, they’re like, Oh, Piedmont logical. If there were, you would have all exercised today, there would be no smoking industry. There’d be no drinking industry. There would be no drugs because people, if they were logical, why would you start smoking? When you know,
it’s only going to hurt you. Cause they’re not logical. So realize that they’re not logical trying to be like what? There’s eight modules. And my competitor only has four. You dummy is never going to work because they’re not logical. You have to actually compel them. You’ve got to cut through the crap. You need to know how a human brain works.
And that’s why my students get like astronomical results. And they’re like, Oh my trip wire, it’s converting at like 5%. Can I go higher? I’m like you to realize that normies only get it at one to two. Right? And they’re like, Oh, so then we’re just like, you know, going against ourselves. But when you understand how a human brain works,
treating people like people it’ll all work, which is why, if you haven’t emailed your list in a while and your first emails is big sob story about why you haven’t emailed them in forever. Everyone is going to be like, I don’t like you. Cause like they don’t care. But if you go in with some type of value and then you’re like,
Oh yeah. And if you’re wondering, how would I get your email address? Again, treat people like people because you signed up for this. Oh, all right. Help me out with something. You tell me what I’m thinking. We’re good to go. I’m not going to hit spam. I might just unsubscribe quietly. So treat people like people realize how their brains work.
So many good things that you said there. I love that. Okay. So let’s actually talk about, and I was actually laughing. I had to put myself on mute cause I started coughing. You’re totally. You totally have me. Correct. You know, leverage really love it. So talking about like I know, right? Like talk about, let’s go into actually the mechanics of writing an amazing email.
So walk us through the mechanics of actually doing it after everybody deals with all the mindset stuff, which I’m so grateful that that’s how you open up this training. I mean, you just have to, again, just like set up. So you can’t do one in seventh grade and have a six pack forever. I mean, I wish present witness tasks could have just been like take that postpartum weight.
Right? So again, it can be a daily thing, you know, it can be a daily thing. So don’t just think like, Oh, but I thought I worked on this. It’s always going to have a thing. So when it comes to writing emails so good, they can like the screen one getting out of your own head is important too.
Like we had just talked about treating people like people is important. Why do you check your email? Cause you don’t want to have to write that sales page you’re supposed to, because you don’t want to have that awkward conversation with your VA because you’ll know that you’re supposed to be pitching podcasts, but you don’t want to get around to it. So they’re like,
Oh, let me just check my email real quick. Right? So you’re doing it as a distraction. You’re doing it as an escape, which is why when people are like, Oh, but I send these big, long, huge emails. Yes. I know being in spam is probably a bad thing. Promotions it’s all right. People check that tab.
The thing you do not want to be in is the all read this leader email. Okay. So you cannot info slap people in your emails because people are not going in with the mindset of an email of I’m going to do hardcore learning. That’s what a blog post is for this sort of podcast is for that’s what a YouTube video is for. That’s what a course lesson is for an email is that short hit of escape.
Okay. So you need to realize that. So when you’re doing your email, yeah, you can have on that super long, as long as it’s entertaining. No one’s going to care. And as long as you’re not trying to tell them a hundred different ways to get clients, they’ll be fine. So when it comes down to actually writing an email like that makes them want to like this screen one,
you need to realize what your actual goal is. So your goal might be for them to reply back. Your goal might be for them to read an email, your goal might just be to build comradery. Then you’re going to want to make sure you have an action. I say, every email needs a call to action. It doesn’t have to go someplace else,
but it can be a reply back. I think that reply back is one of the strongest calls to action. Because next time it is more likely that your email is going to be in the folder that you want to be in. Or again, it can be a follow me on Instagram. It can be on this, but you’ve got to give people a reason to go over there.
You just can’t send an email being like, Hey, are we connected over on clubhouse? No, you need to entice them. What is in it for them? Treat people like people. So in order to make your emails more entertaining, I get constantly, but Kate, I don’t have a big personality like you, but I’ve averaged, but I’m boring.
I guarantee you, there are something about you that you can start putting into your emails, whether it is the name of your cat, your favorite song. You can, one of my favorite things. If I can’t figure out, what I want to email about is I’ll go to a website called holiday insights. You can just Google any of them and I’ll see like what day is it?
Like a national nacho day? Okay. So like say if I was a food blogger, then I could just send Nasha recipes because it’s natural nacho day. If I’m somebody else I could talk about like know like it’s natural natural day. And you know, since that’s pretty cheesy, I want to tell you about the three things that are going to make your website cheesy.
Like you can just rip off of these things. And now all of a sudden, not only are you just using just stats to like 200% of blondes, make more money, I’m making that up. But again, look for stats about your industry stats, about what day it’s going on and then just make some correlations. And the more that you get used to doing that,
the better that it’s going to be. Again, there was a reason why you created a blog post or why you’re going Facebook live, which got me thinking about, which is why in the slide. I don’t just necessarily give them the link, give them the link, but then put a little bullet points because you got to remember, people are reading on their phones.
So when it comes to structuring things, you want to make sure, honestly, if it’s longer than two sentences, I say, give it a paragraph. It used to be three. But I feel like if it’s a wordy three, the probably should be a paragraph. So you’ll see that a lot. Cause people will skim, you know, make sure you use things like bold texts,
but have, you know, little bullet points underneath to talk about like, what’s so great on there. Like, Oh, okay, it’s going to tell you the one thing never to send in your email. She’s going to tell you, if you haven’t emailed your list in forever, these are the two words you used to not having your email, like think of what can I do to make these a little bit more interesting.
And then it’s like, Oh, because every email guys spoiler before, really every email is a sales email because you are selling the fact that you get them, that you understand them, that you’re going to be there for them, that you’re consistent, that you want to interact with them and that you are not ability to borrow him. So whether you’re asking for cash or not,
every email is a sales email. So now you don’t have to get over sending any cause they all are. Oh, I love that. I love that. Oh my gosh. It’s so good. You’re just gold. Okay. I mean, that’s just, you just nailed it. That is so good. And I have learned so much here. Okay.
So I’m going to throw out a couple of common questions that we receive as a company. And since you’re the email queen, let’s see how you answer these. So, and you already answered the first one was does every email need a call to action? And so you’ve already answered that. So we’ll just skip through that. And I love how you answered that in some form.
Oh, you know, let me ask this question in case anybody’s thinking, could the call to action, be giving them steps, like now go outside and look up at the sun and take two deep breaths. Like could the call to action be something that doesn’t have to do with replying or interacting back to you at all? Or is it just having some sort of a call to action?
So definitely give them action steps. Like quick wins are huge, which is why I love how you said go outside and take two deep breaths. And you didn’t like tell them like this whole giant routine to do, but there’s nothing to say at the end of it that you can’t be like, and when you go outside snap a pic and tag me on your Instagram stories.
So that way it’s really organic. And so that way you can share them on for doing something. So if you’re going to give them a little task, give them a place where they can brag about themselves, treat people like people, they like feeling good About themselves, post About it. And some people will, some people post in the Facebook group tag me on your eyes,
your story post on my business page. So I can say how awesome you are. Let’s go outside together. You know what I mean? So that way you can incorporate them more in the world and then treat people like people they’re going to associate that good feeling with you and that’s what you want. Cause then So cool. Okay. And so along those lines,
we’ll just say, if you’re listening to this podcast and you absolutely love everything that Kate’s saying, make sure that you take a screenshot, I’ve listened. He does put it on your IgG story and tag Kate and tag, thus we live company, or you can just tag April beach life and okay. So cool. Now next question. Newsletters versus emails,
you know, the newsletter was kinda dead honestly like seven years ago, but now we actually have clients that like their newsletter is so amazing and they only send it out like once a month and it’s like long and juicy and almost like a calendar. What is your take on the strategy and the difference between newsletters in regular emails? How have you seen those playing out?
If you will only send a newsletter and by newsletter, I want to make sure that we have the same definition. Are you saying something where it’s like multiple calls to action, multiple sections? Is that what you’re defining as a newsletter? Yeah. These are huge newsletters that some of our clients, which are larger companies already, that you know, are in the process of scaling that they send out these newsletters,
people like go crazy at one of them could be sign up here for this. And one of them could be, did you remember to join this? There are multiple calls to action. In these things. We call that more of a magazine style email. If that is the only one that you will do, so you will actually send it, then send it.
So I had an interior designer who was a student and when she tried to do of that one call to action type of a thing, she really mindset got into her head a lot. And so what we did is we went ahead and we turned it into like her Wednesday newsletter. We gave it an actual name and I told her just like magazines have repeating sections.
You need to have some repeating sections, but realize that if you are trying to sell, say an ebook and you’re still having all three of those sections, then the likelihood of them buying is going to be a lot lower to people. Like people, you give them a lot of stuff to do. They will do everything else or they’ll do nothing. Like there’s actually a scientific study.
The jam study. If you get 12 choices versus 24 at 24, you’ll just walk by because you’re just like, that’s too much for my brain. Right? So when I told her, that’s not to say she can’t have flash sales or launches because I feel like, Oh my goodness, she’s emailing on Monday. It’s gotta be important. So then she can just do the one that has the one call to action.
So make sure that you are strategic realize with those newsletters, that the likelihood of them going to spam or promotions is going to be higher. The more outward links to different places that you have, the more likely it is to trigger something. So you can link to your Instagram five times if that’s your call to action, because it’s going to the same spot,
your Instagram. But if you’ve got an Instagram one, that’s going to a deal that you have one that’s going to a blog post one, that’s this one that’s that it can go in there. But again, if you are more likely to send us a magazine style newsletter than send nothing and send it, just realize that your sales aren’t going to be as high because you can’t focus them on one particular action.
So like I would never send a new style in the middle of a launch that would make no sense because people would get derailed. So that’s just the difference if what you want to go with. So if you’ll never do anything, just one of those, but again, try to keep it consistent because then people that are interested in certain parts, they’ll always go right down to that section.
Okay, cool. And now I have a couple other questions that are coming up that I know people are probably thinking. So I’m trying to be in the mind of our listeners right now, a question about the frequency of sending. Is it better to send more frequently, you know, less frequently? Does it depend on the relationship between the business and the audience?
Is there like a regular consistent, like rhythm that you recommend with email sending? Okay. For most people, if you only send once a month, this is nothing. That’s your client. And again, if they’re a larger corporation, they could probably get away with it once a month. Especially if you’re a smaller, more personal brand is not going to necessarily be enough because people are going to forget about you.
You’re not top of mind, they’re their goal. Fishes. Everybody has a goldfish treat. People like people. You’re going to hear that a lot. What I would say for people, especially if you are a personal brand, especially service owner, you’re selling your own courses, aim for once a week. That’s four emails a month. Y’all handle writing four emails a month and what’s gonna end up happening is you’re going to get so good.
You can batch them, meaning, sit down and write them all. Sometimes w a lot of my students really love to do is they will come up with a topic for all four and then they’ll write like two at a time. Right? So again, it’s done, they’ll load them into the convert kit. They’re active campaigns. Doesn’t matter whatever tool you’re using.
And then they know that they’re settled and then people get so hyped about this. Or they do some casual selling, which we teach in the course. And then I’m like, okay, I’m going to add another day. But I would never say like, email this. Now, if you’re doing a launch or you are doing a flash sale, you’re going to want to send more than one email.
Because again, people might not check. They might forget treat people like people they procrastinate so that you’re going to have a little bit more. But as long as honestly, what you have to say is interesting and it’s tackling different doubts or your habits that people have, you can keep sending Austin repeat yourself. Okay. And then the one last question I had is when somebody does have a launch,
you know, it’s normal that people unsubscribed from the list and people get so afraid of that. They’re like, Oh, like the whole mindset thing, which we already knocked out of the ballpark, that’s gone. Now, we already dealt with that. What the question here is, is there like an average expectation for a percentage of unsubscribes that you have seen during launches or is it totally vary based on different brands and businesses?
How frequently they launch? How big obviously, how great the relationship already is with building the relationship? Is there like a average percentage that people can quote unquote expect in unsubscribes around a launch period or no, I don’t know if it’s necessarily during a launch period. The only stock that I could find was in general and it’s actually does hold true. If you guys go look at your analytics is usually when you send any type of email,
you can expect about a 1% unsubscribe rate, which is pretty interesting. So again, if your number is a hundred, then your percentages are going to be like very skewed. So keep that in mind. We need to have some logical, even though I don’t do logic, but like, so keep that in mind, right? When it comes to a launch,
the biggest reason that people are unsubscribing is because you started talking to them about something they didn’t care about, or you never gave them an out. So like the launches that I do, even though, like, I teach email marketing. If you didn’t sign up for a launch, trigger a webinar, a challenge, all of that. I’m not going to send you all my launch emails because you’re not going to want them.
I will send you two. And one of them is just a recent it’s like, Hey, I know you didn’t sign up for this webinar, but I know that you were struggling with ABC and D this is open until Wednesday. If you want to come, come, if not, that’s cool. And then in my launch emails that I have, and I always tell my students to do this too.
I always have that link bottom of the email, sometimes top of the email, Hey, if you know that love your list is not for you. This round, then click here and we’ll chat after the launch is over. Or Hey know that you have a great relationship with your list and you’re making more than $10,000 a month with it. Click here.
I won’t tell you any more about my course, because you don’t need us right now. Just give people an out, treat people like people. But again, if you are setting that one hour to go 30 minutes to go five minutes to go, and you’re making everything about you, then I guess if you could take anything away from this, especially when it comes to launching,
you need to be more excited for them than yourself, because nobody, I mean, we do care that like you have expertise. So I’m not saying any of those fake it till you make. And I hate that line. What I’m saying is I am so disproportionately passionate about seeing Sally earn money from our food blog. When everyone else in our whole fricken family thought that she was nuts.
Like, I am like hardcore rather than like, love your list. And I make all of this money. And like, yes, obviously in each of them, a copywriter, not some rando that hit like big with a pin, obviously that’s important, but it’s not like, Hey guys, my course is open. Never it is. If you are struggling with this and I get very,
very specific, we call them moments. We don’t have time to talk about them. Now y’all are going to have to tell me to find out that’s right. Then I got this and it is going to help. And here’s how it’s going to help because I am so excited. Literally you can see my face to see my people succeed. You have no idea.
And when you come at anything that you create that way, and I don’t care if it’s a meal planning guide, I don’t care if you help cleaning products, I do not care. We are more excited for what they’re going to be able to avoid and achieve. It’s like, I know, yeah, I’ve got this thing they’re going to buy. This is why my students and I get a logical Results and people like that’s bananas.
Like no that’s treating people like people. You are so good. I’ve appreciated you sharing and totally pouring out your crazy good expertise into our audience. This is amazing. Okay. So you have, of course an amazing free thing that people can have. Like if they want to connect with you further, or if they just want like these amazing results, you have two years worth of emails that you are giving to our listeners.
Tell them what that is. That’s amazing. Sure. So what it is is two years worth of email idea prompts. So if you’re ever sitting there looking at your screen, you’re like, I’ve got no idea what to email about. Or even if you’re like, I don’t know how to make this next thing sort of interesting. We do have it dated.
Now, keep in mind if you’re listening to this and it’s like July, it’s like, Oh, well, half the month is wrong. Spoiler alert. January is going to come back. So as April, so it’s may, so you can just restart it over. Like there’s no problem. And some people will actually they’ll follow it verbatim. Like,
Oh, may it sets in this, this, this, and this. And we’ll do it. Some people mix them up. Some people go and just peer in other months. And that is 100% there because now, you know what it is. If anything is time-based because a couple of months we’ll have something like, it’s not Neil national hug your cat day,
but if there’s something that’s going to be time-based to be, well, we make sure that at least once a month, you’re really highlighting some type of paid offer, whether it is an affiliate deal, whether it is her own stuff, any of that sort of stuff is in there as well. So you can hand it on over to Kate Doster dot for slash Sweet life,
either with a hyphen or without I got you both. And then you guys will be able to get that. And you can always listen to my podcast, wherever you’re listening to this. It is in a box of besties and my Instagram, which I’m working on. Let’s say it that way. I spent so much time cultivating my email list, social media.
I kind of forgot about, so it is Kate underscore Doster. So y’all can see the name and I’m sure we’ll have it in the show notes. Yeah, we will. And yeah. Yeah. Instagram followers does not equal amazing experts. Definitely. There’s not an equivalent therapist. I want people to be able to connect with you more. And also you are newly on clubhouse.
So I’m like talking to you behind the scenes. You guys, if you’re in our Sweetlife club on clubhouse, I’m talking to Kate about getting on the calendar. And so we can do a clubhouse room for you guys where you can connect with her directly and ask her your questions, which is so cool. So we’ll put all of that information in the show notes as well.
Kate, thank you so much. It was so awesome to get to know you and to hear everything that you deliver today. We really appreciate your time. I think you’ll ever remember guys being on your list is privilege. So treat it like one<inaudible> Thanks so much for hanging out with us at the end, you are the a game players, right?
You were the winners, the ones that stay and apply all the strategies. As a matter of fact, I was speaking in a clubhouse room recently that if people actually just listened to this podcast for the last four years, they probably would save up to a hundred thousand dollars in startup and scale business coaching that they might have spent on other coaches. We really are here to dedicate true and proven business strategies that you can take to the bank.
So thank you so much for listening to this show do join us in our clubhouse room. We would love to meet with you and clubhouse. We’ll be speaking live at 12 o’clock Eastern with Kate Doster herself. If you’re listening to this live, that will be Wednesday, April 2nd, at 12 o’clock Eastern. And you can find that room by visiting sweet life business.club.
I’ll say that again. Sweet life business.club. And all you have to do. If you are a clubhouse member is you can quickly simply click the button and join our club and you’ll get a notification of this room. All right, you guys have an awesome day. I’ll talk to you next week. Bye-bye
This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?
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You’re listening to the SweetLife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator a probate. Hi everybody. And welcome to 2021. The first show, and we are starting out with a major bang that is going to be a game-changer for you. I’m so excited to dive in and help you understand how to be a peak performer in your health,
wealth, and relationships this year and beyond with our guest expert, Eric partaker. So let’s chat about what we’re doing here and why this show is so special. You know, as entrepreneurs, as leaders, as human beings, we all want to operate at our highest level. We all want to be that person that we envisioned we would be right. But what happens is we get burned out.
We get stretched thin, and there are some things that just don’t balance out to equal the vision that you might’ve had for what you wanted your life and your company to look like. And so we’re going to dive into that and we’re going to start out with a powerful plan and strategies to really be a peak performer in your health, your wealth and your relationships in 2021.
And let me just tell you, this is not another piece of content or some other podcasts on how to become productive or how to set goals. No, no, no. Our guests today shared strategies that I have never ever heard before. These aren’t the same old, same old things. These things are game changers. You guys, if you watch our video episode of this,
it is totally me behind the scenes taking massive notes. The things that he was saying was just gold. And so this is an episode that is definitely not to miss for those of you that really want to operate at your highest level in 2021. And, and frankly take back control of your health, wealth, and relationships, which are all things that we have left behind struggling with this last year.
We all hope and pray. So let’s talk about, you know, really what you can expect out of this episode. In this episode, we’re talking with Eric and I’m going to give you a bio on him. This guy is super duper awesome. So we’re talking with Eric, who’s a peak performance coach and author of the bestselling book, the three alarms,
a simple system to transform your health, wealth, and relationships forever. And the information on this show, like I said, it’s not going to be the same old, same old. You’re going to discover powerful new ways to increase your productivity, deep root your identity in who you’re supposed to be. And you’re also going to understand how to become even stronger with each challenge that comes your way.
It’s really, really good stuff. You guys. So at the end of this episode, if you apply the strategies in here and the bonus, that’s going to be given to you here with this show, you’ll no longer waste time. You’ll have a, to root your identity and who you want to be, even if you’re not that person yet. And you’ll stop being an amateur and become a pro.
Now let’s introduce you to Eric partaker. Eric’s a CEO coach and mentor, author, and peak performance expert. He was named the CEO of the year in 2019 business excellence awards. One of the top 30 entrepreneurs in UK 35 and under by startups magazine and among Britain’s most disruptive entrepreneurs by the Telegraph, he’s advised fortune 50 CEOs while at McKinsey helped build Skype’s multi-billion dollar success story and has founded several businesses of his own.
He’s a certified peak performance coach and has also completed a coaching certification and apprenticeship with professor BJ Fogg who leads Stanford university’s behavior design lab told you this guys it’s just super rockstar. He continues research evidence-based studies in psychology, neuroscience, habit, change leadership and peak performance. And he is giving you a totally free digital copy of his book. You can cruise over to Sweetlife co.com.
This is episode number 208, and a link to download his book will be found in the show notes. So if you are really ready to make a change that is going to stick and your business and your work and your relationships so good. You guys let’s go ahead and dive into today’s show.<inaudible> Alrighty. You guys, I’m so happy to be joined by Eric partaker here today,
and we’re talking to all about peak performance, peak performance, usually in the past, have you been listening to the show for a long time? We talk about peak performance with extreme and adventure sports. And as that relates to the company you’re building basically. So you can have more time to take off and play with your extreme inexpensive venture sports. But today we’re really talking about peak performance that comes before that something that is not discussed often enough in the entrepreneur space.
And that’s about really performing at your highest level all the way across the board, so that you have an opportunity to reap all those benefits and rewards. And Eric is in the house today, talking all about his new book and how you guys can get to this state of becoming a peak performer and doing this in your business. You can do it in your life.
Eric. Welcome. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us here on the Sweetlife podcast. Super glad to have you tell everybody a little bit about yourself. Yeah, thanks April. And thanks everyone for taking the time to listen. Yeah, I’ve, I’ve been obsessed with peak performance for over two decades, but well, first, definitely in the wrong way.
And then in a, in a much better way. So about 10 years ago, it was all, you know, work. It was hustle mentality, and that’s how I was for the whole first half of my career. You know, so a hundred plus hour work weeks at McKinsey and company and helping build up Skype before we sold it to eBay,
few of my own businesses. And you know, I’m on a plane. Start to feel unwell, Dr. On-board rushes over, takes my vital signs and says, we need to land the plane immediately. I think he’s having a heart attack 10 years ago, playing emergency lens, where to a small town in France, the runway shut down. They take me off into a waiting ambulance where they administer nitrates to open up the arteries and increase the blood flow to the heart.
And as the ambulance sped off to the local hospital, I looked up to the eyes of the French paramedic looking down at me and I said, please don’t let me die. I have a five-year-old son. I didn’t say, please don’t let me die. I need to clear my inbox. And you know, my point there is that as entrepreneurs we’re so into the hustle,
we’re so into, you know, what, what do we got to do next? And, and it can all go at any moment at any time. And what I said in that moment, it really truly changed my life because the next morning I woke up and I thought, you know, all of my success to date at that point had come at the price of my health and relationships.
I almost lost my life. And then the very first words out of my mouth had nothing to do even with my own life. But, you know, with my boy at the time, right, my two boys now, but at the time, my, my only son and then that just struck me as, okay, that’s the three legged stool.
That’s what peak performance means. You know, we need to perform at a peak level across our health, our wealth, our work as a wealth driver and our relationships. And when I say peak performance, I’m not meaning turning. Yeah, I don’t, I don’t mean like in a turn a person into a Ferrari, you know, I mean, close the gap between your current and best self across all the areas of life that matter most,
you know, on the health, you know, work and home front. That’s the mission that I’m on now that I’ve been on for the last 10 years. And my book, the three alarms is, is about that mission. And it’s about how I’ve, codafide it as if you want to reach your best on the health, wealth and relationship fronts,
you need to do it through IPA, like the beer, but better for you and the IPA standing for identity productivity and antifragility. Yeah. And thank you so much for sharing your story. You guys watch the videos of these, you know, any sort of story like that. I’m here, like tearing up behind the scenes, but I understand that there are so many people that are on their way to hit that point without what you’re talking about in this book and,
you know, praise God, you were able to come back and figure it out and, you know, share it with the rest of us and really be able to leverage this to the next level and come in here and step in and help entrepreneurs. And so this is a perfect episode before we were recording. I was thinking, I wonder, are we going to air this?
And this is a perfect one to kick off 2021, because some of the things that you’re talking about, you know, we all want 20, 21 to be different than 2020. And it wouldn’t be nice if we just woke up and the whole entire world that was glittering on January 1st and everything was perfect again. And, and, and it’s okay to want those things.
But what we know is that we need to have a plan regardless of what comes about. And that’s what you talk about here in your book. And I love that now you have worked with really high level executives and entrepreneurs and your work in the past and getting people results in this. And it has really been extraordinary. And so I’m super excited to dig into what we’re talking about on today’s show.
So you say how to become a peak performer with IPA identity productivity, and antifragility, let’s go ahead. Can you dive in a little bit, and let’s kind of dissect each one of these things. So our listeners have an idea of some immediate actions and some areas in their life that they can, you know, rebalance or correct, or take a look at and,
and make some adjustments. Can we dive into IPA and the identity first? Yeah, let’s do it all. Talk about each and a practical tool. And the book of, I give loads of practical tools, but we just give like one quick win takeaway for each, each section. And let’s go ahead and say this too. If I can just interrupt.
You also said, all of our listeners are going to get a free digital copy of your book and we will make sure that is a huge gift you guys, and we’ll make sure that the link to that is in the show notes for this show@sweetlifepodcast.com forward slash two zero eight. So yeah. So let’s go ahead and dive in. Yeah. Cool. And,
and I just want to step back just super quickly once again, and say, you know, 20, 20, it was a challenging year. And part of what I’m trying to do with getting the message out around this book is to have it perfectly timed with making 20, 21, a rebound year making 20, 21 the year where you stepped back up to the plate,
right? Where you take things back up a level and you kind of dust things off and you say, all right, let’s go again. And IPA is the path forward. And, and one other thing to remember, my definition of peak performance is not turning you into a Ferrari. None of this is about achieving perfection. This is just about you showing up as your best self in the areas of life that matter most.
This is about you kind of gaining entry to what Abraham Maslow estimated was the 2% of people in the world who realize their full potential. So IPA for me is about gaining entry to that 2% club. So identity, identity, why don’t we start with identity? So the why here is because we cannot become a better version of ourselves now and going forward,
if we continue to be the person that we’ve always been, that doesn’t line up. So what got you here? Won’t get you there. You need to make a change. And entrepreneurs leaders, CEOs are very intentional when it comes to work, they get it. They know that I need to have envisioned. I need to model myself after that vision,
but they don’t bring that same intentionality often to their health and home, or you know, their, their health and relationships. So what I talk about in the book, the three alarms is how I decided, okay, what is the best version of me look like on each of those fronts? And that’s what I’d like everyone listening to do right now.
Just ha have a thing. If you were to give the best version of you, you at your best, a name on the health front, what would it be if you were to give the best version of you, a name or a phrase or a persona on the work front, what would it be? And if you were to do the same on the relationship or the home front,
what would it be? So I gave an example of what I’ve done with myself. So on the health front, it’s not me who goes to the gym in the morning, I’m a world fitness champion. That’s who goes to the gym in the morning. That’s the person who walks through the door. And when I’m in on, in a particular exercise and I get to the eighth rep,
and I’m not sure if I’m going to get to the 10th, a little voice goes off in my head and says, of course you will, because you’re a world fitness champion. And that’s all being driven by identity because behavior follows identity. When I take a Spider-Man costume and I put it on my seven-year-old Leo, I do not need to teach Leo what to do next.
He doesn’t need to go through Spider-Man training camp. I put the Spider-Man costume on and he starts shooting webs from his wrist, jumping around, making funny noises. Right? So what it really, all I’m trying to do here is to get everyone listening to, you know, remember that you’ve already done this. You did it as a kid. You picked an identity,
maybe when you were playing, you changed into that and it changed your behavior. Same concept. You’re just remembering back to something you used to do. Every time I go to the gym now I’m wonder woman, perfect world fitness champion. Now I have that on my phone as an alarm at 6:30 AM, I’ve changed the name of the alarm. And it says world fitness champion to prompt that intentionality.
Okay, because I’ve segmented my day into three parts and I’ve chosen basically a best self identity that will power each of the segments. And so 6:30 AM world fitness champion goes off. The next alarm on my phone goes off at 9:00 AM and it says, world’s best coach, am I the world’s best at all of these things? Of course not. But that’s the version of me.
That’s going to start the Workday. How does that version of me show up and behave in the world? You know, how decisive inspiring and reliable will I be for my clients? If I’m coming from the vantage point of the world’s best coach versus just Eric and at 6:30 PM, the game-changing alarm for me, we’re all different for me. This is a game changer.
It goes off and it says world’s best husband and father to prompt the, how would the world’s best husband and father walked through that door right now? That’s the power of intentionality, right? So I’ve chosen, what does best look like on the three areas of life that matter? Most, I queue it at a particular time of day, that would most benefit from being powered by that best self identity.
And I get three massive benefits. It brings intentionality into the day. It brings wise counsel, you know, into a moment, you know, okay, what should I say in response to this person? What should I do next? Well, what would the world’s best husband and father do? And number three, it prompts, reflection, because if I do lose my cool with my seven year old,
for example, I’m not perfect then because I had something so high to measure against, I feel like a real jerk afterwards. Right. And that’s good because that’s making the gap painfully obvious and it means that I get better and better at closing it. So that’s the identity piece I’m taking course millions of notes here. I’ve already named all of my different sections of my day and who I am.
So I just I’m appreciating this and eating it up. I’m a sponge here, loving this information. I love that identity too. And it’s so true. Like when along the lines did we forget who we believe that we are rather than, you know, what the world tells us. And so, and I, and I love that. And you’re so right about the fact that as entrepreneurs,
we are so apt to believe that before in our business, but maybe not so much in our health and our personal lives, those things for sure are not the same. Maybe it’s because money doesn’t drive it. And it’s not because they aren’t as important to us. Well, maybe the health at first, you know, so I think this is super awesome.
Loving this so far. So let’s talk about productivity, the identities, EEI, and in IPA, what do you do and what do you recommend as far as productivity and how does that, why did you choose productivity as part of your methodology for obtaining people? Yeah. Great question. So, okay. So context then, you know, setting. So first we start with,
well, who is it that we want to be? That’s the identity piece. So now we’re operating from the vantage point of our best self and the three areas of life that matter most. So what do we do now to make progress? Because we’re just awesome, but we’re standing still, right? And we need to progress. We need to climb the mountain now.
Right? And so we do that through action. So that’s why we talk about productivity because knowledge isn’t power anymore. These days I can Google anything and be knowledgeable about it. Within seconds. Knowledge is not where the game is played. It’s about taking consistent persistent deliberate action. That’s where the game is played. And that’s why we need to optimize ourselves for productivity,
because we don’t want to just be taking any action. We want to take the right action and most efficiently, so smart. So there’s loads I go into in the book and productivity. I actually, it’s a big thing that, although the IPA acronym is it’s only three letters I had to do productivity planning and productivity execution, because it’s about, you know,
plan, execute, plan execute. Right. Right. And I think before you go into it, you’re an expert in this. Did you realize that I know a lot of entrepreneurs that have the best laid plans, but then zero ability to execute. Is that why in your experience of dealing this, you know, entrepreneurs, we can think of these,
Oh, this is going to be the plan. We can even set the plan, lay the plan out the steps of the plan, reverse engineer, the plan, Gantt chart, the plan, whatever it is, but then actually doing it tends to be a lot harder. So is that because we all struggle in this? Yeah. Yeah. Well,
I was a chronic over planner. I would just plan, plan, plan, plan, plan. The other thing though, too, that I noticed with myself was that I was also a world-class procrastinator and may have something to do with the entrepreneurial mindset because of our tendency to dream and to, you know, think about, you know, big opportunities and the next big thing,
it’s almost like this, you know, proneness for distraction, right. Or at least it was for me. And so I had to transform myself from a chronic procrastinator to a super producer. And, you know, we won’t have time to go into all the productivity tools, but I want to drive home. One in particular that I think is mind blowing.
So the average person loses and this, this data, I first picked up, by the way from the book, the one thing, the average person under observation loses 28% of their Workday to multitasking and effectiveness. So the person thinks that they’re multitasking in an efficient way, but what they’re really doing is they’re doing what’s called task switching, going from one thing to the next,
very, very rapidly. And that leads to a 28% loss in the day, because rather than sticking with one thing, they’re jumping around. So when they get back to the thing that they originally intended to work on, they’ve lost their place. They have to retrace their steps at the regain, their momentum, all of this leads to lost time, 28% loss of a day.
Now the book just leaves the stat right there. And I thought, hang on a second. This is like not doing that stat justice. So I took that number and I said, well, let’s generously take off six weeks for vacation in a year. So let’s do 28% loss against 46 work weeks. That means that the average person is losing 13 weeks a year,
which is an entire calendar quarter. So of course you don’t feel productive. Of course you don’t feel like there’s not enough time for everything you’ve lost a whole quarter every year Because you aren’t productive. And because you would have lost all that time. I mean, you’re playing a game of basketball and you’re going against the competition. You get to the end of the third quarter and then news to you.
Somebody says, Oh, by the way, we’ve got to tell you, but you and the rest of your team had to sit out the fourth quarter. You’re like, huh. And you’re like, well, how do we even have a chance of winning then? And they’re like, Oh we don’t. Yeah. It’s. So if we extrapolate that across a 40 year career,
that means that the average person loses an entire decade. What could you do with an extra decade? That’s like two more careers potentially. Wow. So what’s the problem here? The problem is people just jumping around too much throughout the day that in their phone disturbed their, their focus and the concentration, having too many browser tabs, open notifications coming in left,
right and center all of these lures to kind of guide us off our path for peak performance, our path for realizing our full potential that’s the issue. And so what we have to combat all of that with is developing the power of single tasking, which is a bit of a lost art, especially nowadays with smartphones angle tasking is nothing more than making sure you stick with what you’re working on for a good chunk of time.
At least 30 minutes provided there’s 30 minutes of work to do. I like to shoot for, you know, 30 minute chunks throughout my day. And then I take a break after 30 minutes. And the way you can develop the habit of single tasking is by becoming a lawyer for a few weeks. And what I mean, what I read is that lawyers timesheet their days because otherwise they don’t know where to assign the client time.
And when I thought about that, I thought, well, if a lawyer can do this every single day as part of their career, then I could certainly should be able to manage it for like, you know, few weeks. So all I did was I had four columns activity start time, end time, total minutes. And I literally recorded every single task I did from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed kind of before and after work,
I was more like grouping stuff together. You know, it’s like getting ready for example. But once I started the Workday, it was everything. So working on presentation nine to nine, 13, nine, 13 to nine 17, LinkedIn nine and 17 to nine 20, you know, Google search nine 20 to nine 23, reheated coffee and check Twitter.
And the alarming thing that it revealed was just how much task switching was going on. On the first day that I did this, I had 77 entries in my Workday. Wow. As I was bouncing around unknowingly from one thing to the next. So when you do this, it does two things. One, it raises an unprecedented level of awareness in you in terms of where is my time actually going and how often,
you know, am I switching and bouncing around? And then two, it starts to become kind of painful when you have two for the third time, for example, on a day, right. Facebook 20. Right, Right, right. It’s really eye-opening. And I could see how that would be incredibly. Eye-opening really, really fast. And gosh,
I mean, I just think that there is so much last time, by the way, the one thing is one of my favorite books of all time. And we’ll make sure that the notes to that book as well are in the show notes for this show. And I think that one of the things that you’re saying here was really, really interesting, the art of single tasking.
So when we single task and chunk our time and block calendar, a block and tackle and do those things, how fast and how much more of an increased you see in productivity in your clients that you have do that. I mean, is that like instant results that they’re seeing when they actually change these are, what are your case studies working with clients who have,
who’ve really tried to apply this. Yeah, that’s a great question. So we’re not machines, we’re not robots. And so what that means is that we can’t actually reclaim the entire 28% and then that may lead you to believe that, okay. So then I can’t actually get the full quarter back. That’s actually not true because when you start to develop your ability to focus,
it also speeds up your output for the 72%. That wasn’t an issue anyway. Right. So what I see is, well, beyond then the 28% capture, it’s almost like people are becoming twice as productive as they previously were and that’s life changing, right? Because you’re producing more with the time you have. And that suddenly gives you the time that you are yearning for when it comes to your health and your relationships.
And yeah, it’s been life-changing for me to personally, because I just work, you know, with an extreme sense of focus I’m intensely on and then intensely off. And there’s no real anxiety during my Workday. There’s so much to be said to this. Like you were saying, I mean, it’s, you guys are just going to be super excited when you get a chance to experience Eric’s book with that being said again,
there’s so many things we could talk about, but moving on to the anti-fragility, let’s talk about that and why that is so important. We were talking about it a little bit behind the scenes before we started recording. What exactly is that to our listeners who are just wondering, I don’t even know how to define that necessarily in my life. Yeah. Okay.
So let’s play a game. Let’s say that you are a shipping container, you know, and my question would be, well, what does the container or the crate, you know, say on the side, if you’re that crate, what’s your label, is it fragile? And then that means you get hit a couple of times you break. And then my question to you would be,
well, what’s the opposite of being fragile. And then you’ll say probably something like robust, you know, or strong, robust, and strong synonyms, you know? So that just means that, okay, I can kick you a few more times and eventually you break and then you might say, no, no, no, no, no, no,
no, no, no. I’m resilient. Okay. Well, by definition, that means that we can keep hitting you and you’ll absorb the shock and you’ll stay the same. It’s like, Oh, okay, well that’s pretty good. Enter antifragile. The more we kick you, the stronger the crate becomes, wow. That’s where we want to be.
Now people, when they first hear this say, okay, wishful thinking, that’s like, you know something in a Marvel movie, that’s, that’s not reality, but then you’re dead wrong because every single person, your body is a perfect temple for anti-fragility. You stress a muscle and it causes it to grow. You expose the body to germs and bacteria.
It builds the immune system. You expose tissues to, you know, small doses of, you know, ultra by light. And it actually generates vitamin D you’re already, anti-fragile physiologically your body’s already doing it without you even realizing it. So it’s hard coded in your DNA. You just need to get what’s happening in your body, up into your head.
And so anti-fragility is about realizing that the gym, where you go and you train doesn’t need to just be there in the gym. You can turn life into one massive training camp. So every moment of adversity, challenge, frustration, disappointment thing, that doesn’t go your way. It’s nothing more than a personal trainer in the gym of life, walking up to you and saying,
Hey, here’s a Dumbo. Do you want to curl it? And you can either grab the dumbbell, curl it, complete the repetition and grow stronger as a result. Or you can wimp out and walk out of the gym. So it’s up to you. And the antifragile mentality says, yeah, I’ll take that dumbbell. Yeah. And if you’re in an argument with somebody,
for example, and now they escalate the argument, all that’s happening there is that they’re saying here here’s a heavier Dumbo and you could walk away or you could stay there and you can curl it with your best self. So loads of different ways of building this mentally, you know, anti-fragility, you know, that I cover in the book, but probably the most powerful,
I mean, there’s so I have so many favorites, so hard to choose. Okay, I’ll go with this one. If you can embrace this, just this, if you forget everything else I’ve just said, and if you just embrace this one thing, even if you forget to pick up the free digital copy of the book, that’s fine, but just don’t miss this point.
And that’s in 2021. Do you want to remain amateur in life or do you want to turn pro let’s start with an amateur. So the first half of my career, I let an amateur existence by that I made feeling for me, preceded action. I needed feel like doing things in order to do them. So feeling generated action. That’s how an amateur lives their life.
And the amateur will get amateur. Results a pro knows that it’s action that generates feeling the equation is literally flipped, which means they don’t need to feel like doing something in order to take action. They take action, whether they feel like it or not. And in fact, when you really upgrade this kind of way of being or mentality, the less you feel like doing something,
the more discomfort it presents you, the more you step into it, the more you say it’s there for in that direction. I must step, you know, it’s sorta like elite warriors are trained to run towards the sound of gunfire, not a way. Right? And so turning pro versus remaining an amateur, what do you want 20, 21 to be?
And where have you been an amateur in life? And where can you develop a professional mentality and know that action generates feelings, not the other way around. Wow. Eric, I’ve never heard it explained as well as you just explained that there, thank you so much. I mean, that was just, I mean, the anti-fragility part in one of the things you said,
let me look back at my notes here. So I have it, is that the resilience you bounce off and stay the same. And so many you hear that talked about so often like, Oh my gosh, well, you need to be resilient and just bounce around and just pop off this. But what we’re talking about is, yeah, resilience keeps you exactly where you were before you don’t go forward.
You don’t go backwards. You just bounce off and you remain the same in the way that you’ve just explained that with actually changing with actually becoming stronger from each one of the blows, the pushes, the drops, whatever it is super amazing. And I love everything that you said, and I know our listeners are just really going to get a ton out of this.
Not only that that’s so generous of you to give away a digital copy of your book and for your time here on the show, this is the perfect show. So Jeff Goins introduced us. Thank you, Jeff, for bringing Eric here on the show. Jeff was a guest on the show. Oh my gosh. Like almost four years ago now in the very beginning,
when we first launched and he was right on about you being perfect for our audience and your message that you wanted to share. And I’m so glad that you’re here and this is exactly what we were looking for for honestly, for me personally, to kick off 2021, you know, we have guests on the show. I learned so much from you and really wanting to find somebody that was saying exactly what I selfishly personally needed to hear right now is an entrepreneur and a mother and a leader.
And what I would consider was a peak performer up until 2020. And now I just feel like I have been resilient and I have not necessarily gotten stronger through this. And so I will look at myself very, very closely after today’s episode. And I’m super excited to dive in more to the work that you’re doing and really appreciate your time on this show.
And so tell everybody how they find you. I’m really into reading print copies. I love holding a book in my hands, how they can experience your work, where you hang out when you are being incredibly focused and hanging out online, not all the time and how they can work with you when they’re ready to really take their business and their life to the next level.
Yeah. I just have to say April that, you know, when you say, wow, I really needed this personally. Hey, me too. You know, the reason that I’ve done all of this is not because I wasn’t born thinking this way. I had to become an expert about all this stuff because I really needed it. I needed to become anti-fragile.
I needed to become more productive. I needed to start living more intentionally. So we’re all on the same boat on that. So I just wanted to say that. So, okay. The book, if you like print copies of the book, please head over to Amazon, amazon.com, amazon.co.uk. I’m based here in the, in London, in the United Kingdom,
but either Amazon will have the book. If you head over to my website at Erik, Erik with a C Eric partaker, just like it sounds partaker.com got a free digital copy of the book waiting for you there. And I have some free three-part video training with worksheets as well, waiting for you there that will help you further embed some of the concepts in the book I’m coming out with an entire video course that I’m filming actually this week,
like over 40 different modules, all about IPA, which will be available on the website by the time this airs. And then if you’re listening and you’re like, look, I think I benefit from even just a chat, a single kind of peak performance insight session, which, which I run, you know, on a free basis with people, or if you’re like,
I need a coach or any of that, then just get in touch via the website. And, you know, we can have a chat, basically. I’m looking after, at the moment, 24 CEOs, entrepreneurs, other coaches, and they’re running everything from billion dollar businesses down to pre-revenue, you know, they’re just getting their funds raised to start their business,
but they all share the same quest. They want to close the gap between their current and best self. They want to reach their full potential and they want to do it. Multidimensionally and then, you know, my email, Eric, Eric partaker.com. So there you go, Thank you so much and we’ll make sure all those links are in the show notes.
And thank you so much for your time. I am super stoked to kick off 2021 with you, Eric and great to be connected with you. Thank you.<inaudible> Right. And that is a wrap for episode number 208 here at the Sweetlife entrepreneur and business podcast. You can find all of the show notes and the digital copy of the book that Eric’s promised you here on today’s show by visiting Sweetlife co.com
simply click on podcast. And this is episode number 208. And for those of you guys that are really ready to kick off this year with a bang, make sure to join us for commitment week 2021. It is coming up on January the 11th, totally free to join, and we are going to be covering five different aspects to reset and refocus your business for 2021.
It’ll take less than seven minutes a day. You guys it’s insane. We’ll go ahead and leave the link to join commitment week 2021, as well as the link to download Eric’s book in the show notes, or you can also just simply join commitment week by visiting Sweetlife coat.com forward slash commitment dash week dash 2021. Right? You guys be awesome. Can’t wait to talk to you next week.
Bye bye. For now
This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?
Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
You’re listening to the Sweetlife entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business, mental and entrepreneur activator, a probate. You guys. It’s so great to talk to you again. This is Sweetlife entrepreneur and business podcast. So number 203, and I’m April beach, your host here at the show and at the recording of this,
we are turning over into the month of December. I’m so excited. I know you’re with me. Let’s have jazz hands here. We’re ready to put this year behind us. And in the process of doing that, it’s time to plan for 2021. So this episode is a really cool episode. It’s actually a great show. I have recorded this show and released it in December for the last three years in a row.
And today we’re talking all about the steps to plan this next upcoming year for profit and lifestyle freedom. And so this is a great show for those of you guys that are wondering how to plan out your business plan for the upcoming year. But also you share the same values as me, where as you want to make sure you’re setting aside time to be with your family,
to travel to your kid’s soccer, things that they’re going to do to go visit your family reunion at the Lake, whatever it is that you want to do, that you have a vision that you want to do, that you can do for the upcoming year. And the truth of the matter is, is if we don’t plan your business for this in advance,
it’s never going to happen, never, ever, ever going to happen. And regardless of any global pandemic or anything else that comes around or where we are as a world, as the new year rolls around, you have to have a plan or it’s never going to happen. So that’s what we’re talking about on today’s show. And you know, people ask me all the time,
how I’m able to run two companies, have a busy podcast and still be able to travel with my kids. So in 2019, I was away from the house for almost six months for the whole year, traveling and living in different places. And this is how I did it. So even though this year, didn’t roll out the way all of us wanted.
I’m still going to teach you how to plan for it for the years to come. And in this show, this is what you can expect. At the end of this episode, you’re going to know how to lay out your whole entire year for lifestyle freedom. And I’m going to give you the steps, almost the order of operations in which I go through this every single year.
You’re also going to be able to assess what changes you need to make to your current offers. That’s actually going to make that happen. This shows can help you open up your eyes in a very sobering way. I’ll be honest regarding what you’re selling and whether or not what you have in your menu of offers and services and programs is honestly ever going to get you to the lifestyle that you want.
And we’re going to do that by making sure you have the most important math equation. I hate math too. I’ll be honest, but there are some pretty important math equations that most business coaches don’t tell you that I need to make sure that you’re aware of. Because if you don’t know these numbers, if you don’t hit these numbers, you’re never going to have lifestyle freedom.
And so we’re going to dive into all of those things on today’s show. Again, this is Sweetlife podcast episode number 203. So you can cruise over to Sweetlife code.com or find us on all of the podcasts listening apps in all of the show notes will be@sweetlifecode.com. Number two Oh three. And we do have a couple of bonuses for those of you guys that are really interested in making sure you’re nailing your 2021 business and profit plan.
The first thing is join us over in our Sweetlife community. We have just launched our premier members community. It’s $7 a month. Yes, I’m charging $7 a month for it. We really only want to make sure serious business builders are in there. And so we need to charge people something. Otherwise we just have dead weight. I don’t like dead weight in my communities.
So cruise over to Sweetlife community.com and in December, I am going to be teaching a class, a workshop taking you step-by-step through the process of laying everything out that I’m talking about high level on the podcast. So join me on December. The, let me look up the date for you 17th, as long as you joined Sweetlife community.com, cruise over there and pay your little puny $7,
I will be teaching you a live masterclass and taking your questions on top of that as you’re going through this training. And as we’re talking about what you need to do, step-by-step to lay out your year, if you’re struggling whatsoever with your offers, if you can’t hit your offer numbers that you need to hit, then go to signature offer.com. There’s nothing I can give you right now,
but you can join our wait list for our new signature offer masterclass. It’s opening up again in February of 2021. So those are some resources. They’re all there in our show notes. And let’s go ahead and dive into today’s business training.<inaudible> The steps to plan your business year for profit and lifestyle freedom. So starting with the most important thing you have to have is a primary offer that you know,
will generate the revenue that you want. So how do you know that you have to take time to craft an outline, a high value, high impact program service, signature offer, or package. So if you haven’t done that yet, that’s your very, very first step. Again, if you need help with that cruise over to signature offer.com and we’ll connect in my in February.
But the very, very first thing is making sure that you have a primary offer that is high value, high impact that people meet, where they want so much, that they are seeking you out. It’s something that is incredibly needed in your space. And they’re going to pay you to solve this for them because they either don’t want to, or they can’t do it on their own.
They can’t do it without you. So you need to make sure that you have this primary offer and that it’s nailed down. Emitted is awesome. So we can’t plan your year. We can’t plan profit unless we know you have something incredible that you’re selling. And I’m talking about the primary offer that you were selling. So after you know what your primary income source will be,
then I want you to look at the year. I want you to look at a calendar and this is how I do this. This is how I teach it. And I’m telling you what you guys have been doing this now for about seven years, every single year, it’s exponentially better. So step number one is to look at your whole entire calendar.
If you’ve ever seen behind the scenes, I literally have a 12 foot calendar going across my wall. I’m a calendar dork. It’s a dry erase calendar I got from Amazon. And I can look on my wall and whatever calendar you like to use. I want you to block off all the times in this upcoming year that you plan to travel or take off work in the whole entire year.
So if you don’t have a specific plans yet, but you know, you want to travel, make sure you block off those times now. So for example, I have no idea where exactly I am going to travel next summer, but I can tell you what I know I’m going to be on the East coast, at least a dozen times at lacrosse tournaments over the months of June and July.
And I know I’m going to be on the West coast with my other son dancing in the spring. So I’m still blocking off those times in my calendar, even if they’re just general times. And I don’t know exactly when I’m going yet, but generally I know that I’m not going to be in the same work capacity. So after you’ve gone through your calendar and you’ve thought about the times that you want to travel,
even if you don’t have specific plans yet, even if we don’t know what the world is going to look like, I want you to block them off now or you know what you’re never ever going for sure. And step number two is to block off any professional development time after you block off your personal time. So this could be time for working on any projects that you’ve set aside,
like writing that book, or maybe doing a big project, like rebuilding your website that you really can’t dive into because you haven’t blocked off all the busy-ness of work in life. So I want you to go and I want you to think, when do I want to be working on these projects? When does this make sense to me to reach this specific goal?
And I want you to note it on your calendar and if needed, you might need to take off or reduce your client or business service time to develop your new professional skills or write that book or whatever it is. So step one is blocking off travel time, family time, when you just really don’t want to be in the office setting. Number two is setting aside your professional development time and what this does,
is this a side note here? It’s super cool because as you see these conferences coming up, whether they’re online or in person or a mastermind that you want to join being offered in 2021, you know that you will have already made those things important. And so now you can look for those things that actually fit into your calendar. Look for the opportunities,
the mentors you want to work with and the trips that you want to go on professionally or the work that you want to do. So that is why blocking off your professional time. Come second, because again, those are things that they come last, usually for us as business owners and they shouldn’t. And then after you’ve blocked off and secured your personal growth time and your lifestyle time,
now let’s get into how you’re going to pay for it. Right? So looking at your primary offer, I want you to ask yourself, can you still deliver this primary offer during any of your blocked off times as the answer is yes, then there’s really nothing much you need to do. But if the answer is no, then you’ve keenly become aware that you need to sell more of your offer in less time.
So you better be strategic to pull it off, right? So therefore I want you to block off your primary selling period and product or service delivery times for this primary product or offer. I’ll give you a personal example. I always like to try to show you guys behind the scenes. So I know that I’m traveling a lot in June or July. So when I open up my,
your signature offer masterclass, for example, it is never going to be in June or July because I will never ever do it. I’m not going to be here to do that, right? So I know that the times I’ve blocked off on my calendar to invite people, to join me in my signature offer masterclass, I need to make sure that I am hitting our financial end goal benchmarks during those times.
And you need to do the very same thing. So go on block off your primary selling periods. And when you are offering that particular primary offer in order that it’s going to work with the rest of your calendar side note to those of you guys that are in somewhat of a seasonal business, there are certain seasons that align with when people buy. So,
you know, if you’re a realtor, there’s a house buying. If you will kind of season, you know, you’re not going to not plan to sell during when your primary season, it would be like a bathing suit shop closing in the summer. So although we are designing your life because we’re creating a profit plan that gives you lifestyle freedom. We always have to be obviously realistic.
When do people want to buy what you’re offering? And so take that into consideration when you’re going through and planning this. So first we’ve laid out your personal time off second, we lay out your professional time off third. We note on your calendar, your primary selling periods. Again, in order to pull off the lifestyle side of it, we need to sell more in less time.
So now we need to look at those numbers. And this is when the sobering part of the podcast training comes next. You need to crunch the numbers. This is seriously not rocket science. I am terrible at math. How many of your offer do you need to sell in order to hit your financial benchmarks for that particular product in those groups of times,
for the year. And in order to answer that you need to know some basic things about your primary offer. First, first of all, what is it cost? And secondly, what is your capacity? Your capacity is how many people you can serve at once. So what is the cost of your offer and how many people can you actually have based on your business capacity,
serving during those times of the year that you need to sell your primary offer. And then once you’ve gone through it for your primary offer, then you’re going to rinse and repeat the same step for any other offers. You have secondary offers, digital products, quick grab things that might not require so much of your time. So first I want you to do it for your primary sales objective,
your primary signature program service, whatever it is, you do know how much it costs and ask yourself how many people can I serve at a time. And these numbers become really sobering for some businesses. You may realize that with your offer, the way that it is, you can never reach your financial benchmarks. And I’ll talk to you about what to do here in a second.
Give that to you then. And again, I want you to rinse and repeat this for any other offers that you have. And so you’re going to end up with some basic but powerful math and these answers to these math questions or really sobering. So you will learn that you possibly need to alter and change some of your products, business model to serve more people,
to reach your financial benchmarks. And this is what we call scaling. This is what my company does. This is our Ninja skill. We help companies take your assets and scale them with other online business models and offers, and is a side note. If you’re ready to scale, then you know where to come. But if you’re looking at your offers and saying,
wow, I have this really amazing. Let’s say, for example, you are a career coach have this really amazing career coaching, but it’s one-on-one. So we need to, to create other opportunities for you to bring in more streams of income, using your expertise, your intellectual property, your content, and your assets, so that you can still keep your one-on-one clients.
But then we’re adding more revenue through scaling by other offers. So this math is really going to let you, you know, Hey, does my current business model actually support the lifestyle I really, really want? And then here is the next part. This is the part that most business coaches, well not tell you. So we have this number, right?
We have this dollar amount that you need to hit in order to be able to take the other time off, to head to that mastermind, to pay for that mastermind for him and sakes. So the other sobering reality, every single entrepreneur should know and opens up the world of sales. Statistics is the average sales conversion rate is 3%. Now, every industry is totally different.
This is just generally speaking, but this is the baseline number to start with. I’ve done a ton of podcast, by the way, you guys, on how to increase your conversion rates. And as an example, most of our clients close it over 80% with their sales calls. But the reality is is if you’re selling like a digital product or a low touch sales funnel,
let’s just call it 3%. I would rather underestimate and have you underestimate than overestimate. So if we have our dollar amount, right, that you have to hit, right for your primary offers and your secondary offers taking the percentage that 3% are going to convert. This is your next question. You need to ask yourself how many people do you need to reach in order to convert the numbers of products you need to sell to reach your financial benchmarks at 3%.
So if you need to sell $300,000 to sustain the life that you want, that your company, and this is all growth, but $300,000, and let’s say your product or your service is worth 10,000, then you need to sell 30 of them, right? Basic math. But now here’s the reality check. Now ask yourself, 30 sales is 3% of what number in.
This is a number of people you need to reach in your marketing in order to hit that financial benchmark. And the answer to that is a thousand. So if you you’re wrapping up your really plan and you want to mindfully create your marketing strategy around the number of people you need to reach, not the number of people you want to sell. I need to know that you know that number.
So if you need to sell 30 of your primary offer or your combination of offers in order to hit the sales conversion yeah. And that you want, how many people do you need to reach? And as you’re going back to your map, your map, I call it map. Everything’s a map in my head. As you’re going back to your calendar could a map,
right? As you’re going back to your calendar, make sure that you are blocking off your marketing time out on your calendar, that you are enabling for ample warm up time with your audience, ample relationship, building time, grassroots marketing on top of the regular digital marketing strategies so that we can increase your conversion rates to exceed your baseline sales needs and expectations.
So this is all about planning and calendar planning, but it’s important that you know, the difference between how many you want to sell and based on basic sales conversions, how many people you need to reach, because we have to plan your marketing and your strategy, the time in your calendar to make sure that you are nailing it. Well, I hope that makes sense.
Again, if you want me to roll up my sleeves with you in there and talk about these numbers we can do. So, and the workshop that I am teaching in Sweetlife community.com in December, you can join me over there and I’ll give you some extra help with this and really work through, take your personal questions. I’d love to see you in there.
So in summary, wrapping it all up here for you to plan your year for freedom. First, you start with blocking out what you personally professionally need. That’s a very first thing to block out in your calendar. If you don’t do it, you guys it’s never, ever going to happen. Then you reverse engineer the numbers, hand in hand with your calendar to make sure that you have planned the marketing programs and the service delivery systems in conjunction with the sales to reach those numbers.
In most cases, you’ll realize it’s time to scale that you’re going to have to change some of your offers, maybe add some additional revenue streams of income so that you can work less utilizing the assets you already have in order to hit the numbers and reach the lifestyle for you and that you want. So whether you’re heading on a family reunion or are going with your girlfriends to hike the John Muir trail lifestyle freedoms,
the reason why you became an entrepreneur, right? So let’s make sure that you’re planning your year in advance and you’re crunching the numbers. You’re creating the programs and the offers that are actually going to get you there. So I hope you found this episode helpful. I hope this wasn’t the first time that you were aware of the percentage of, of sales conversions and how to plan that into your marketing time and strategy.
But if it is, I’m so glad that you were here, it’s a really sobering non-sexy number that really opens up how important marketing your business is. And so today we talked about knowing how to lay out your whole entire year for lifestyle freedom, making sure you’re laying out your things you need first. Otherwise it never happened. We talked about being able to assess what changes you might need to scale your current offers or change a business model in order to reach your lifestyle goals and to do so.
We need to reach your financial benchmarks. And we talked about knowing this basic math and making sure that you’re looking at your numbers and they’re going to tell you, do I need to change my offer? Do I need to make it more of a higher value? What do I need to do to my offer my program, my service in order to be able to charge that or do I need to scale other things that I already have?
So I hope you guys found this helpful. I love chatting with you. Welcome to December. I’m so glad we’re here. I hope that your holiday season is kicking off and that you’re just having a great time, that you’re super healthy, where you are and spending time with those people. You love again, cruise over to Sweetlife community.com. If you want to join me in there and connect with us further,
and thank you for tuning into this show, please share it with your friends. All the show notes can be found at Sweetlife co Right? I’ll talk to you soon.
This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?
Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
You’re listening to the suede life entrepreneur podcast, simplified strategies to grow your service business and launch a life you love faster with business mental and entrepreneur activator a probate Back to the show. I’m April beach, the host here at the Sweetlife entrepreneur business podcast and my company this week life company, and this podcast is all about helping offline companies scale online and helping entrepreneurs,
experts, and small businesses create your signature offers and launch your business. We are super excited to chat with you again today, and we have an amazing guest in the house. I’ll introduce you to her in just a second, but let’s go ahead and dive into what we’re talking about today and why it might be important for your business today. We’re talking about how to grow your team and transition to that CEO role.
You know, oftentimes new businesses struggle to move from that place of doing all the things to building the team that you really need to grow your company. So entrepreneurs and creatives, it’s a constant struggle for almost every single one in the beginning of your business, that you just automatically might not come wired with strategies and systems in mind. And you love your business so much.
Your hands are in every aspect of your business. It can be really hard to delegate and bring other people aboard. The problem we face is it’s going to cause issues with scaling your business. And when it’s time to really grow, we need you to be able to build your team and to bring the right people board so that you can take on the CEO role.
But here is the kicker. You maybe shouldn’t be the CEO of your company. And in today’s episode, our guest and I dive into that as well. She even shares an example of how one founder knew that she didn’t want to be the CEO of the company strategically in the beginning and built her team around that. And why you actually have permission to operate in your growth of your business.
However you want. There are no rules here, but let’s face it. Not all entrepreneurs are the best leaders in their company, but if you have a growth mindset, that’s a critical part to help you learn and develop the new skills that you need and want to become the leader. You can be an amazing CEO of your business. So in today’s show,
we’re talking about three steps to transition from this founder role into the CEO role. We’re talking about understanding what this transition looks like and what it means to you to go from a doer to a leader. We talk about aligning your objectives with the strategies that you want before you ever hire your first team member. And we’re talking about creating a culture within your business.
Even if you have independent subcontractors, here is the other little special question that I asked our guests today. I asked her what if a company is ready to grow, but you really afford to hire a full-time team member. And you’re considering giving equity in your business in exchange for having an advisor or somebody come aboard. And our guest today answers that question.
You get some really great wisdom as well. So today’s guest expert is Kate Carney and she’s an experienced business consultant, lawyer and strategic advisor. And she helps female founders scale businesses and reach profitability. She works with businesses in a founder centric approach to performance, focusing on leadership, talent strategies, and organizational design. And she believes that alignment in these critical areas,
results in a culture that supports sustainable growth for your business. I’m super excited to introduce you to Kate Carney, and let’s go ahead and dive into today’s show all of the show notes and the resources we talk about can be found by visiting Sweetlife co.com. And this is episode number one 98.<inaudible> Hi everyone. And welcome back to my conversation today with Kate Carney.
I’m super excited to be here and have her as a guest because we’re talking about something that I know a lot of our listeners struggle with, and that is this transition, not only mentally, but within the systems and the structures of your business, when it’s time to change from that role of being the founder of your company and doing maybe even like the Jack of all trades,
doing a lot of things into the CEO role and delegating. And that can certainly be a struggle. So we have Kate Carney here on the show today, she’s our expert, and she’s going to be diving in with you and giving you the strategies to go through this transition a little bit more seamlessly than maybe you have been doing so before Kate, welcome to the show.
Thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here. I am super excited that you’re here. Tell us a little bit about you and help our listeners get to know you a little bit. Sure. So I am a lawyer by practice. I know lawyers, but I am. I worked with corporate and mostly hedge funds for 12 years.
And in 2016, I quit with no plan in place, a new mortgage over my head. I just needed something different. I wanted to be challenged by something I really wanted to learn, and I had no idea what that was. And so I spent most of 17 figuring out what that could look like. And you look back on your career and you find one common thread.
And for me, that common thread was always serving as the right hand to whoever is in power, whether that the CEO or the senior partner at a law firm, that’s where I always slotted in. And it was for my judgment really, and my ability to give opinions that are reasoned with information when asked. And so, you know, what does that translate to?
I wasn’t really sure. I ended up going to a co-working space to do because I wanted to get out of my house. And I started going to events and I met a bunch of entrepreneurs and I loved hearing their stories and what they were doing. And I thought it really great to be part of this future economy and around really passionate people that I vibe with.
And so I made the transition into doing legal work for startups. I had been introduced to a gentleman who had started a boutique firm that focused just on startups and high-growth companies. And so it was the beginning of 18. I moved over to work with them and I got to work with startups mostly on any corporate legal matters from formation through, you know,
sales transactions and everything in between. And that was great. And I got to see, you know, when companies were doing well and growing and, you know, clients that didn’t get anywhere. And I served as an outsource general counsel for one client. And I went in their office twice a week and all the fed and they were falling apart. And you see all the reasons why this founder kind of fall apart or not be able to make the transition.
And I did a lot of research and I talked to a lot of founders and I, you know, I looked at all the stats around female founders and I just thought this was an area where I could add a lot of value because it poles not only my beagle rational, analytical mind, but it also pulls in some of the executive work I’ve done on senior teams and a lot of the strategic work I’ve done and it kind of pulls them all together.
So I moved on to coaching founders and I love it. I love that story. And so you were in a really unique position, so you have seen, and you, like you said, you’ve been at like the right hand of some of these really powerful and prominent leaders. And you’ve seen that and they’ve trusted you for your advice. And then you totally scaled down if you will,
to this beginning route in this beginning of seed of this entrepreneurship, and then you see the struggles there. So you have a really unique advantage point of seeing what it looks like in the end, and then coming back and seeing where people fail in the beginning. I love your story. And so in this process, going through and realizing that when a founder is in this place where they’re ready to grow,
what are some of the problems that you’ve seen that people run into mental problems and strategic problems? Why is this transition from founder to CEO and your experience so hard? I think a little bit, if we can talk about that, need to control, you know, it’s your baby and people struggle to go from it’s your baby to it’s a business, right at the beginning.
It’s an extension of you who you hire the teams, how things get done. It tends to be about personal achievement at the beginning, like the winds of the company or your wins. And you need to move into this place where the business stands on its own. And that means hiring people, putting together teams, removing yourself from the middle, and that’s scary,
right? You think nobody can do it as well as I can do it. I know my market best. I did the research. I know my product or service better than anyone, but if you want to scale, you’ve got to remove yourself from that center. And I think founders just struggled to get there. And I think part of it is,
you know, a challenge of taking on the new role and understanding what the new role is. And some of it’s just this, I can’t let go mentality. Yeah. Yeah. I agree with that. And, and we’re so emotionally charged and the things that we’ve created, it is hard to let go. And it’s hard to have trust in that.
And so what are some of the things that founders should be doing to think about their role differently when they get to this transition point? I think it’s important to fundamentally understand the different, you know, as a founder, you tend to be the execution person, the ideas person, there’s this notion if your head’s down and you’re hustling and you’re the middle of it all.
And to be a CEO, I think it’s about culture, right? Setting the right culture and developing your culture. It’s about hiring and developing your managers. It’s about promoting collaboration, putting some systems in place and then serving as the key connection to all your stakeholders. So whether that’s internally with employees or vendors, or most importantly your customers, and so that’s a big role,
no doubt about it. And honestly, most people aren’t suited for that role if they haven’t done it before. And so there’s this panic, they’re this, they’re a failure. Am I smart enough? Can I do it by let people down? Particularly if you’ve taken on venture capital dollars, will you let people down? And I think the starting point is having this growth mindset.
So always start with the mindset and then sort of the tactical. But I think the growth mindset is critical, right? If this belief that with hard work and learning, you can develop new skills. And if you want to learn something, you can read about it, or you can learn from people who have the necessary experiences. And this is where I think you can hire coaches,
find mentors, go to leadership programs, find peer to peer networks to build your leadership skills and to learn about all these other areas that are really important to being a CEO and have the conversations with others that have either done it successfully, or can guide you through the process. And some of the things you struggle with. But I also think it’s if honesty and self-awareness that you have to stop and say,
okay, what am I really good at? What are my strengths? And what do I like to do? And then what are my weaknesses and what don’t I want to do? And you might be great at something, but you also may not want to be CEO. And that’s okay to admit. And I think some founders struggle. I had a client who has a COVID her business was taking off.
She hadn’t had a patent, it was taking off. And she said out of the gate, I do not want to run this company. I want to hire somebody first step. I want to be in the MOC in there in the weeds executing. And so that’s really important to know. I have another founder that just held on to the very end and destroyed what was a company and ego kept him there.
And I think that he plays a problem. And so he’s got to know what your strengths are. You don’t have to be good at everything. Right. Nobody expects you to be good at everything. You don’t have to do it all. Yeah. Right. And I think, I think that we, we do. I mean, yeah, we,
we certainly expect ourselves to at least know how to do everything at first. And, and I think that’s an important part of being able to delegate, but I love those two examples and I love how that founder, she knew right away, Hey, listen, this is, I love what I do. It actually reminds me of Michael Gerber’s book, the E-Myth,
you know, where he goes through and just really defines the entrepreneur, the technician and the manager different roles. And we do as business owners and as entrepreneurs fit into those really differently. And if you guys haven’t read the E-Myth, it’s a great, you know, beginning business, you know, creating systems book, we’ll put a link to that in the show notes for you.
And I love that awareness that she had. And I think that most business owners do kind of feel like, well, this is my company. I got to run it. And I love the freedom and how beautiful that wasn’t her thinking, Hey, you know what, no, I want to be in here. I want to be creating, this is what I do.
And this is what I love to do. So when you’re going through that transition period, you got to make those first hires and you have to build that team and you have to start somewhere and it can be really scary to hire your first person. And so how do you recommend our listeners? You know, some of our listeners have teams, smaller teams,
mid-size teams, how do you recommend people that haven’t ever started? They haven’t made their first hire yet, or they’re ready to make their first big hire, whether it’s to, you know, a C, M O or somebody that’s really going to take on a bigger role. And there’s going to be a lot of trust required. How do you recommend people go about doing that?
It starts with being very clear on your strategy. You need that in place first. And then you can break that down into specific objectives on how you’re going to get and work forward. And then break that further down into specific skills and experiences you need to execute. And you’re going to be creating those functions. If it’s, let’s say to grow revenue from a hundred K to a million or something,
find who’s done that, or has experienced growing sales teams, perhaps. But if you’re really clear about the role and the objectives, and you put that out, you’re more likely to attract the right person, know what you expect them to do the first 30, 60, 90 days one year, particularly right now, you know, it used to be that talent was hard to find,
but now the market is flooded. And so it is going to take some weeding. So be very clear about what your expectations and what the job actually is. And there are certainly challenges whether that is to hire too soon before you really have the job in place. And so you’ve got this nice list of roles and responsibilities, but they don’t kind of exist when you bring the person on.
That’s frustrating, but more often, I see it’s waiting too long to hire somebody. And you certainly don’t want to be in the position where you’re scaling quickly and you just need somebody to come on and you make this really quick hire. And it’s probably for many people to end up that way. And you may have to fire that person and you just don’t want to get in that position.
So thinking very clearly early, Hey, here’s my strategy over the next six to 12 months, this is the objective. This is what I’m going to need to accomplish it. These are the skills. Okay. When do I want to start this process? And it takes a while. So you do want to give yourself time to lead through interview. And I think the biggest thing is going to be,
you want the culture fit and that’s not easy to read very quickly. So you’ve gotta be really clear about what kind of culture you want to develop. One bad Apple obviously can be extremely costly, both for time, energy and a negative impact on the team morale, particularly with small teams, right? If you’re a team of five or six and you have one just negative Nancy,
or, you know, not a team player, whatever it’s going to impact everybody. And they’re not going to want to come to work because it’s just a hostile or not fun work environment. I had a founder say that when he thinks about hiring, he says for every one I hire, I’m going to end up with 10 more, just like it really tells me,
like, is that how you want to grow? Do you like these people in us, listen to your gut. If your gut is telling, you know, ask others that you’ve interviewed with your colleagues and say, did you get the same reaction, right? Or is this just me? You know, maybe it’s something else going on in your own bias in your head,
but ask, but really listen to your gut and trust your intuition more often than not, instead of just forcing somebody into a spot because you mean, Hmm. Okay. I have some questions, but first of all, what I heard you say was you have to take the time to figure out what you want. And I think that a lot of founders,
a lot of startups don’t actually know sometimes what that role that they want to fill. It looks like because they haven’t even actually worked in that before, which is why they’re hiring somebody else to do it. They aren’t an expert at it either. So really taking the time to figure that out, doing the research, getting guidance, wisdom from other people and just taking the time to figure that out.
And my biggest fail. So I own two business consulting firms. And I still remember when I built my first team, it was 2009 or 2010. Finally, I had one woman come to me. We’re great friends today. And she said, April, you are for sure the worst delegator I have ever worked for. And it’s because she would say,
Hey, I want to own this. And I’d say, great, go own it. And then she’d come back and present something to meet. And then, and only then would I take the time to look and see what she did and realize I didn’t want it. It was ultimate entrepreneur leader, you know, creative mind failure. And I knew that,
and I’m so grateful that that’s something that she pointed out. And I have had to actually work to hone in my skills as a leader in a delegator because I was awful at it. And I think there are a lot of business owners like that. Like, they’re not really sure what they want yet. And so they’re waiting for somebody to come in and take it.
But I love that. You said you got to figure it out. You got to figure out the strategy because she was a great person. And she is an amazing asset still to my companies, but she could have just walked away and she didn’t. And so I was really grateful for that. So I just wanted to kind of share that relational story.
If anybody’s saying, how do I do this? If I don’t know what it looks like yet, it’s do take the time to research and get guidance on that and figure out and brainstorm what that means. Okay. So here is my question for you. We have clients that we work with, that aren’t in a position yet where they can hire a full-time employee.
So I have two questions, totally different going in different directions, and I’ll just pose them both. And you can go whatever direction you want to go or answer both of them. The first question for startups or for mid-sized businesses that don’t have the funding yet. It’s more of a statement and I’d love your feedback. I know that there are companies that give advisors a percentage of ownership of that company in lieu of a full time salary to start out.
I would love your take on that. The second question is how do you create culture now that our teams are so spread out and working virtually? Is that a problem that you are seeing new growing companies have actually creating a culture within their teams when nobody’s actually physically together. So I know those are two totally opposite questions, but I would love your expertise.
I’ll talk about culture with this work from home, but on the equity piece, you know, it’s an effective way to reward them on pace them and incentivize them to work with you when you don’t have money at Warren and be careful at the very beginning, you bring on all these consultants are basically people that are working so free essentially. And they start asking for equity and everybody wants to be an advisor.
If you can push it off six months to a year, when it comes to like the high level advisors and see what they actually contribute. Because so many people say I’m going to be an advisor and take a half a percent, and then they do nothing. They don’t make any connections all year that you kind of want to have that, that people are worth whatever equity you’re giving up and it’s okay to give them,
but I would be cautious and moved slowly and assess and evaluate that person before you hand out equity, because yes, it’s very cheap, right? I mean, it’s worth zero when you’re growing a business, but it’s valuable down the road. And there don’t just hand it out like Great advice. And we’ve seen both instances with clients of ours, where they gave it out in the beginning and the people you’re right.
Did nothing. It was absolutely a waste. And then the other companies who have waited for these really top level advisers and they’re worth their weight in gold and they love advising them and they’re super involved and making all these connections. So great advice. Thank you for that. Okay. On the culture side of it, like we were talking about how do you,
how do you create culture within your new company and lead teams in a way that’s effective and really fires people up and helps them to love what they do when everybody’s so separated And new, interesting challenge. And we’re going to say a lot of new leadership styles come out of that and different ideas. And I think that’s very exciting. I mean, again,
it’s going to come down to leadership at the end of the day. I truly believe that your culture comes down to leadership and that, that is how you delegate and how you empower people. That is how you communicate with them. You know, that is how you have those teams working and sort of the processes and systems that you have in place. You know,
those are important too, but for leadership, it’s going to start with communication, right? I think over communicate is what everybody’s saying. There’s probably some happy middle ground, but it is about communication. And it’s not just the town hall that you have with the whole group or the all hands meeting on Monday morning. But it is about specific groups working on projects.
It is about specific one-on-ones that need to happen. It is very much about matching the type of communication with the type of task that needs to get done. And so not everything is meant to be on Slack. That could be for a project that is moving very quickly and it’s a small team, and maybe you do messages if it’s urgent and, you know,
still use email and have expectations. I think communication with the right tool setting expectations and that’s part of leadership. And there is concern that there’s a lot of lines being blurred between personal and professional. It’s easy to set this tone when you’re home, that you should be available 24 seven. And I think it’s the responsibility of leadership to acknowledge that there are breaking points and that it’s okay.
And just be honest about when you’re going to be available and when people should be available. And the little thing like be empathetic. I think we can’t talk about that enough for leadership be empathetic. There is so much going on for your employees that goes beyond just doing their task and their job. There are a whole nother set of pressures that never were before.
And so really listened to them and, you know, ask, how are you doing? You know, how’s work from home, working for you, what isn’t working for you, anything I can do to make the team, you know, working from home any easier for you, ask questions and particularly to your direct report drive. If you’re the CEO,
you don’t have to ask every single person, if you’ve got a big team, your functional heads can ask their team, but start asking questions and remind your team of your mission, right? You still are responsible for setting that vision and communicating it and inspiring your team. And so even if you’re pivoting in some ways, right, most likely the vision hasn’t changed,
how you’re getting there might be changing because of COVID. But most likely, unless like, I don’t know, it was completely wiped out. The problem you’re solving entirely, but most likely, you’re just, you’re changing how you’re getting there. So just remind your team constantly what they’re working on and that vision. And so they feel connected to something that is unifying.
And then of course, you know, you could do the happy hours or the lunch and learns or the game nights and, you know, have a social channel on Slack that the bag wine, or Yeah. I’m like, why? Cause that’s mine, I don’t sell the new irrelevant, But that’s great. It’s something relevant, but that creates a conversation between teams.
I love that. Thank you so much for all your tips today. So today we talked about, you know, what really does that transition look like from founder to CEO and why so many people struggle with it? And thank you so much for your wisdom and what you shared with our listeners on and really how to get through and process that and how to think differently.
The founder is that ideas person, but the CEO is the developing of other people. And it’s totally okay if you don’t want to be the CEO of your growing company, as you shared, which I particularly love that. I think that information and that insight is just gold because I don’t think business leaders actually realize that and give themselves permission to not fill that role.
And then we also talked about, you know, making sure that you have your objectives and your strategies and what you want and what you need to find before you start building your team and growing your team so that you’re setting clear expectations of what you want, what you want the culture of your company to be like, and the person that you want to fulfill that role.
And then you also shared with us your wisdom on really creating that culture through distance. And, and I think that distance is going to stay. And I totally agree with you that there are some boundaries that need to be set. I’ve always worked from home. And so I feel it’s interesting from this vantage point, just to kind of see more traditional businesses that are working from home and you’re right.
I mean, it’s bleeding everywhere. They’re working all the time and then you have kids behind and homeschooling and there’s so many other struggles. And so that’s certainly something that I’m so glad companies are taking into consideration and really processing through. And then for our listeners, I want to share this software with you guys. We love it. We’ve used it for a while.
So if you have a team and you want to create culture and you want it, you don’t want to use Slack. Although we love Slack for a lot of reasons, we also love Voxer. So I’ll make sure we put a link to the show notes and boxer boxers, just a walkie talkie app, basically, where you can send to your team and you can send it out to everybody at once and just say,
Hey everybody, it’s Monday morning, you know, what’s your objective this week. I’m thinking about you. And it was really much more of a personal connection than a typewritten connection. And, and we love that software as well. So we’ll go ahead and share a link to that in our show notes and tape, where can people find you? You know,
somebody saying, Oh, you know, this is really great. I really need help, but I need her strategy and I need her wisdom and her eyes and my company. Where can they find you? You can find me. If you go to my website, you can also download five strategies for scaling. The website is K the number eight Carney,
C a R N E y.com. Or you can just DM me on Instagram at K eight dot Carney. Great. And we’ll make sure that we share all those links for our listeners. So these, you guys can find those in the show notes as well. Kate’s five strategies for scaling, really aligned with what we talked about today. And these are all things that you guys have to do and you have to nail before you can scale your business.
So I would definitely recommend grabbing that from her as well. Kate, thank you so much for your time and being with us today. I loved chatting with you on the show. We really appreciate you being our guest expert this week. Thank you so much for having me. You’re welcome.
This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?
Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?
Need faster business growth? Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?
Need faster business growth? Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
This episode is for those in Phase 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 of the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap™ Not sure what Phase your business is in?
Need faster business growth? Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
There’s no doubt that COVD-19 will affect how some businesses run. These are hard times, but on this show, we’re talking about great opportunities to grow and scale your business online. These strategies will help you continue to reach and serve your clients while developing new streams of income and developing a new business model that leads to more lifestyle and location freedom for small business owners.
Schedule a complimentary business triage call here.
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Links Mentioned:
The SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode #00: Lifestyle Entrepreneur Manifesto
The SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode #06: Create & Dominate Your Block Calendar
Join us for Speakers Summit Virtual Mastermind!
If you haven’t listened to Part 1 of my interview with Kathy Haan, you’ll want to make sure you do that before listening to this episode.
Kathy Haan is a business coach, travel blogger, influencer, podcaster, and travel agency owner. You can find her work featured in places like Forbes, USA Today, Cosmopolitan, and Thrive Global. When she’s not at home in Iowa with her husband, three children, and two enormous Great Pyrenees dogs, you can usually find her traveling the world, creating content, and storytelling on stages.
Take a listen to this final part with Kathy to understand why she says, “how you can become an influencer in your industry!
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Join us for Speakers Summit Virtual Mastermind!
This is not an episode about how to have a million followers. If you care more about the numbers than the results you deliver and the relationships you build, you will fail.
However, if you want to learn from a true international influencer whose story and work has changed lives and if you want to develop your influencer marketing plan for the right reasons, this is the episode for you.
Kathy Haan is a business coach, travel blogger, influencer, podcaster, and travel agency owner. You can find her work featured in places like Forbes, USA Today, Cosmopolitan, and Thrive Global. When she’s not at home in Iowa with her husband, three children, and two enormous Great Pyrenees dogs, you can usually find her traveling the world, creating content, and storytelling on stages.
Kathy had so many amazing insights and tips that we’ve decided to split this episode into two parts. So, make you don’t miss part two.
[Tweet “If you care more about the numbers than the results you deliver and the relationships you build, you will fail.“]
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Join Commitment Week 2o20
You’ve been dreaming big and know that the next decade will define your life, you just may not know exactly how yet.
Now is the time to claim your leadership, influence, and role in your own future – and that starts with your business.
Based on what we’ve seen the past few years and what the trends and research tells us about the next decade, there are five core areas you should be focusing on when planning for 2020 and beyond.
This podcast episode will help you lay out your strategic plan to kick start your best decade ever.
[Tweet “You’ve been dreaming big and know that the next decade will define your life, you just may not know exactly how yet.“]
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Take the Lifestyle Entrepreneur Roadmap Quiz to find out where you’re at in your business so you know what to focus on in 2020!
Join Commitment Week 2o20
As a mom who owns two companies and has three boys, the reality is that sometimes my life gets a little messy.
Unfortunately, this carries over into my businesses and I just can’t do great work or produce very well when things are cluttered and disorganized.
I know you’re planning big things for 2020 so, if you’re anything like me, let’s help declutter your business so you can focus on the things that will bring you those big results.
Whether you’ve just gotten your first idea for a business or you’ve been in business for years, this episode is going to help you sort through the mess in your mind, clean-up your business, and start this next decade off on the right foot so it can change the course of the rest of your life.
[Tweet “As a mom who owns two companies and has three boys, the reality is that sometimes my life gets a little messy.“]
Links Mentioned:
13 Outlook Productivity & Organization Tips
Check out Burn the Picket Fence™: Behind-the-scenes of a lifestyle entrepreneur family
[Tweet “I often get asked how we manage such a chaotic life with business and kids. The truth is, it’s not glamorous.“]
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Grab your FREE copy of Joy Wilder’s Top 11 Apps That Will Change Your Life!
December is a chaotic time of year for most people even if they’re not running their own business like you are. If you’re feeling especially overwhelmed you can’t miss this episode with Joy Wilder.
Joy is the founder of the Brilliant Life™ Business and Micro-Planning™ Systems where she helps women design insanely successful businesses around a life they love without sacrificing their family or themselves.
Joy’s a certified business coach and specializes in Micro-Planning™, helping others turn their passion into profit and optimizing existing businesses’ profitability. She’s the mom of four children under the age of eight, owner of three small businesses, and former Location Pastor.
She has a passion for coaching others to live their Brilliant Life™ while impacting their communities for good.
When not raising her businesses and babies, Joy loves date nights with her husband, is a spinning junkie and a Settlers groupie.
[Tweet “December is a chaotic time of year for most people even if they’re not running their own business like you are. If you’re feeling especially overwhelmed you can’t miss this episode with Joy Wilder.“]
Links Mentioned:
Joy Wilder’s Podcast | The Brilliant Life Show
FREE LIVE WORKSHOP: How to Plan Your 2020 Lifestyle Business Calendar to Live Your Best Year Yet
Do you know exactly what you’ll be selling next year and exactly how you’ll reach all your financial goals? No? Then you don’t want to miss this episode!
Every entrepreneur needs a signature offer and, if you don’t have one yet, now is the time to finally change that.
Nailing your signature offer can help you create a 2020 business plan that will finally allow you to have your dream freedom lifestyle.
So, take a listen to learn about the three steps of planning your signature offer.
[Tweet “Do you know exactly what you’ll be selling next year and exactly how you’ll reach all your financial goals? No? Then you don’t want to miss this episode!”]
Links Mentioned:
FREE LIVE WORKSHOP: How to Plan Your 2020 Lifestyle Business Calendar to Live Your Best Year Yet
This is a time of year where we’re spending a lot of time focusing on giving gifts to those around us, but I want you to use this episode as a time to focus on giving yourself a gift that will last you all throughout next year.
Taking the five steps mentioned in this episode will help you have a business that will finally allow you to have the freedom lifestyle you’ve always wanted.
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It was a bittersweet moment in the Beach household recently when my oldest son signed his letter of intent to play lacrosse at his future university. It helped me realize that not only does this signify a major personal life transition, but it also signifies a pretty big professional transition as well.
My business has evolved as my children have grown. Each stage of their lives has been reflected in how I structured my business and now the time’s come for me to think about the next evolution.
The great news is, once you’re over forty, it only becomes easier to start and have a successful business.
Take a listen to this week’s episode to found out the statistics that back that statement up and why the world needs you to stop being intimidated by the idea of starting a business midlife.
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Links Mentioned:
40+ Entrepreneur | The True Potential Podcast
How Old Are Successful Tech Entrepreneurs?
Four Secrets To Success As A Midlife Entrepreneur
Beth Rees Jones (@midlifemomsadventureclub) on Instagram
Susan Goodkind Wideman (@ goodkindoflife) on Instagram
Stefanie Pollard (@wearemidlife) on Instagram
Angelique Miles (@angeliquemiles) on Instagram
Join Advance Your Reach Nov 4-10, 2019 only!
Learn About Our Speakers Summit Mastermind Retreat – FREE when you join AYR with Pete through our link above.
Speaking is the most powerful way to grow your business. In fact, every time you get on a stage.. be it a podcast or a local venue… your business will grow.
Last week, my friend Pete Vargas was on the show and we broke down the exact steps to outline your signature talk. This week I’m giving you the exact steps to land almost any podcast guest spot you want.
In this episode, I guide you through 3 simple steps to land any podcast, but of course, we go deeper so you really (really) know what you’re doing.
I also reveal the secrets to what podcast hosts are looking for when they accept guests, and I get very transparent about what not to do when pitching yourself for a show.
If you’ve been in business for years, or you haven’t launched your business yet, podcast guesting is a powerful way to get started.
Linked Mentioned:
Speakers Summit Mastermind Retreat Boulder, CO.
Get your FREE chapter of Christine McAlister’s Book, The Income Replacement Formula!
I’ve never worked for anyone else a day in my life. I have no idea what it’s actually like to work a nine-to-five job.
However, I know that’s not likely to be the case for you. So, if you’re feeling stuck in your nine-to-five and you’re looking for a way out, I’ve brought you the perfect guest this week to help start creating your escape plan.
Christine McAlister is a business coach, the founder of Life with Passion, and the bestselling author of The Income Replacement Formula.
Christine helps high achievers all over the world replace their incomes, and then some, and quit their nine-to-five jobs.
Take a listen to this episode to find out the seven steps you need to take in order to leave the corporate world behind!
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Links Mentioned:
Christine McAlister on Instagram
Christine McAlister’s Facebook Group | The Passionate and Profitable Entrepreneur Society
The SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode #00: Lifestyle Entrepreneur Manifesto
Dan Miller’s Book | 48 Days to the Work You Love: Preparing for the New Normal
Join the Reset & Refocus Challenge to get your FREE action planner!
You’ve spent the last few months traveling or transporting your kids to all their summer events and you’re needing to back into your business flow now that they’re back in school, but how? Over the past several years, I’ve developed a way to do exactly that.
Last week was my annual Reset and Refocus Challenge that I do every August with my community. This is honestly something that I have to do every single year in order to make sure I make the most out of the next 90 days.
In this episode, I’ll be explaining the five core areas we covered in the challenge this year so you can do one of your own.
[Tweet “You’ve spent the last few months traveling or transporting your kids to all their summer events and you’re needing to back into your business flow now that they’re back in school, but how?”]
Links Mentioned:
There’s a lifestyle entrepreneur movement happening and each year more and more families are pulling their kids from traditional schools for two reasons:
1) The system isn’t preparing their children to be entrepreneurial independent thinkers.
2) The traditional school system is cramping their family’s desire for time and location freedom.
In this disruptive episode, we dive into the difference of homeschooling, unschooling and traditional education, how each is affecting our kids and if it’s time for you make a change for your lifestyle, kids and future.
I also share behind the scenes of how we’re navigating these questions in our family and how we handle three kids who thrive in three separate structures.
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Links Mentioned:
Burn The Picket Fence™ on Instagram
Pay Flynn’s Book | Superfans: The Easy Way to Stand Out, Grow Your Tribe, and Build a Successful Business
Online business is rapidly changing, and authentic relationship building is taking the lead.
That’s why I’ve brought the incredible Pat Flynn on the show to talk about how to create a deep connection with your audience and have people follow you faithfully.
Pat is a father, husband, and entrepreneur who lives and works in San Diego. He owns several successful online businesses and is a professional blogger, keynote speaker, Wall Street Journal Best-Selling author and host of the Smart Passive Income and Ask Pat podcasts; which have earned a combined total of over 60 million downloads!
Pat has won multiple awards and has been featured in publications such as The New York Times and Forbes. He’s also an adviser for ConvertKit, Leadpages, Teachable, and other companies in the digital marketing arena.
If you’ve been trying to build your followers, but the connection just isn’t there or if you’ve been trying to apply automation and funnels to your relationship building, this is an episode you can’t afford to miss.
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Links Mentioned:
Pat Flynn’s Podcast | Smart Passive Income
Keoni and Pat Flynn’s Podcast | All Of Your Beeswax
Check out the trailer for Burn The Picket Fence™
This episode is unlike any of the episodes I’ve ever put out and it has been feeling completely uncomfortable.
If you’ve been listening to the podcast for a while, you’ve heard mention my behind-the-scenes family vlog, Burn The Picket Fence™, several times.
Historically, I’m not someone who cares what other people think about me, but this project has me feeling incredibly vulnerable. In fact, even recording this episode had my heart racing.
Take to the listen to the episode to find out why I felt called to undertake this project, why I held back on releasing it for as long as I did, and the five strategies that will help you Burn The Picket Fence™.
[Tweet “Historically, I’m not someone who cares what other people think about me, but this project has me feeling incredibly vulnerable.”]
Links Mentioned:
The Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Online Business Model That’s Right for You
Donate $100 To Join The SweetLife Project – Online Business Building Course (100% of Proceeds Given To NonProfits)
Even though entrepreneurship can feel lonely at times, it’s impossible to grow your business without relationships. That’s why this entire month has been devoted to various types of relationships and today’s episode is no different.
Whether you’re still in the planning phases of your business or you’ve been at it a while, there are key relationships that are critical in today’s world if you want to grow your business and I couldn’t go through relationship month without breaking them down for you.
[Tweet “Even though entrepreneurship can feel lonely at times, it’s impossible to grow your business without relationships.”]
Links Mentioned:
Burn the Picket Fence Release Date Notification List
45 Statistics on Millennial Spending Habits in 2019
Consumers are more likely to spend money on companies that care, a new study finds
Laird Hamilton and Julian Borra’s Book | Liferider: Heart, Body, Soul, and Life Beyond the Ocean
Download Jennifer Kroiss’ FREE guide, 7 Steps for Making a Professional Networking Event Feel Less Like Work
Community truly is the new currency.
However, most of us don’t have the time to sit around and start new relationships. So, we have to be very strategic with our time and how we build a bond with our clients.
Jennifer Kroiss is a business strategist and networking enthusiast who says relationships have influenced every aspect of her 20-year career. She’s now become so great at connecting with others that she left her corporate job three years ago and has a successful business based entirely on referrals.
If you’re a new entrepreneur or an established one who feels you’re not fully connected to a community the way you want to be, you don’t want to miss Jennifer’s tips in this episode.
[Tweet “Community truly is the new currency.”]
Links Mentioned:
Download Andi Forness’ FREE Guide: A Dating Profile That Attracts Your Ideal Guy
Andi Forness is an online dating coach who’s been published in Mind Body Green, Greatest, Austin Woman Magazine, Thrive Global and has been quoted in Forbes, Bravo TV, Men’s Health, and more!
Andi helps single, high-achieving, analytical women use online dating as a personal development program so they can finally find Mr. Right and feel fulfilled in all areas of their life.
One of the ones Andi relates dating to entrepreneurship is by pointing out that online dating is just like online marketing.
Whether you’re single or have been married for 20+ years as I have, this episode has something for everyone. So, take a listen now to find out the other ways dating (even your spouse) can help improve your business!
Below is a list of items Andi mentioned in the episode as examples of things that might be on your daily list of activities:
[Tweet “One of the ones Andi relates dating to entrepreneurship is by pointing out that online dating is just like online marketing.”]
Links Mentioned:
Join me on Dr. Cheryl Fraser’s Love Bytes mailing list
“Falling in love is easy. Staying in love takes mindfulness.” – Dr. Cheryl Fraser
Sharp, frank, and fearless, that’s Buddhist psychologist, sex therapist, author, and speaker Dr. Cheryl Fraser.
Dr. Cheryl is a sought-after media psychologist and relationship expert who combines cutting edge love and sex therapy with mindfulness to help couples cut through resistance and ignite the connection and sizzle they think they’ve lost.
Speaking from the wisdom of others and my own personal experiences, I truly believe there is a connection between our intimate relationship with our spouse or partner and the success of our business.
So, whether you’re married, planning to be married, or seeking a more intimate and passionate relationship with your partner, this is one episode you do not want to miss!
[Tweet “Falling in love is easy. Staying in love takes mindfulness.”]
Links Mentioned:
Watch Selena Soo’s FREE Publicity Training:
From “Best-Kept Secret” to Industry Leader:
3 Publicity Secrets to Multiply Your Revenue, Reach More People, and Change the World
Episode Highlights:
In order to become the go-to expert or influencer in your space, you need publicity.
That’s where Selena Soo comes in …
Selena is a publicity and marketing strategist for visionary entrepreneurs, experts, and authors who want to reach millions with their message.
Selena has helped clients and students get featured in places like O, The Oprah Magazine, Forbes, and INC. and land interviews on popular podcasts and national TV.
Selena’s signature approach comes down to building powerful and long-lasting relationships with influencers in the media in a thoughtful, authentic way.
Many of Selena’s clients have become industry leaders with seven-figure businesses, raving fans, and hundreds of thousands of followers.
[Tweet “In order to become the go-to expert or influencer in your space, you need publicity.”]
Links Mentioned:
The SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode #00: Lifestyle Entrepreneur Manifesto
Get Amber De La Garza’s FREE High-Value Activity Identifier
You can’t expect to be profitable in your business if you’re not productive first.
Amber De La Garza is The Productivity Specialist. She’s a sought-after coach, trainer, speaker, writer, and host of the Productivity Straight Talk podcast.
Amber helps driven entrepreneurs execute actionable solutions to maximize your profit, reduce your stress, and make time for what matters most.
In my conversation with Amber today, she’s breaking down the four “buckets” you need to fill in order to be productive and profitable.
[Tweet “You can’t expect to be profitable in your business if you’re not productive first.“]
Links Mentioned:
Amber De La Garza’s Podcast | Productivity Straight Talk
The SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode #02: Don’t Make Perfect the Enemy
Take the FREE Habit Finder Assessment
Steve Hultquist has been an engineer, founder, senior executive, ski instructor, industry analyst, and more. He’s currently a coach for people who want to get past their mental blocks.
In fact, Steve was my very first business coach almost fifteen years ago.
I was making some excuses for myself and Steve helped me shift my thought processes so that I could remove my blocks and stop playing small.
If you think you might be getting in your own way, this is one episode you can’t afford to miss.
[Tweet “If you think you might be getting in your own way, this is one episode you can’t afford to miss.“]
Links Mentioned:
The SweetLife Entrepreneur Podcast | Episode #02: Don’t Make Perfect the Enemy
Join me in my brand new business mentorship and mastermind, The Committed.
Kendra Hennessy is a mother of two, a home management expert, the Founder of Mother Like a Boss, and the Host of the Mother Like a Boss podcast.
Kendra’s mission is to redefine homemaking in the 21st century and make the difficult and tedious parts of running a home smoother through systems, routines, and mindset shifts.
In this episode, Kendra and I take a deep dive into the importance of having boundaries both at home and in your business. This is especially important when it comes to being specific about when you’re going to consume information and when you’re actually going to create things for your business because, as Kendra says …
“If you’re in consumption mode, you can’t be in creative mode.”
[Tweet “If you’re in consumption mode, you can’t be in creative mode.“]
Links Mentioned:
Take a look at my recommended business coach interview questions.
If you listen to this podcast, chances are you either already have a business or you want to start one.
Building a business takes a lot of work and time, and if you’ve been trying to do it on your own with little results, it might be time for a business coach.
In this episode we talk about how to know if you’re ready for a private business mentor and if so… how to find the right one!
[Tweet “Is it time for you to stop trying to start or grow your business on your own?“]
What to do if you can’t hire a private coach right now? Download the DIY Calendar here.
Links Mentioned:
April Beach’s Business Coach | Taki Moore
Sign-up for Ashley Matejka’s FREE Wellevance 101 Mini Course
It’s officially 2019 and now is the time most of us are setting New Year’s Resolutions or our goals for the year. However, I challenge you to instead focus on your intentions for the year.
Ashley Matejka is a passionate holistic wellness consultant and the creator of Wellevance; whose approach helps professional women struggling to prioritize self-care as they juggle all of life’s pieces to create healthy habits and align their lives.
In this episode, Ashley is going to show us how to set intentions in the eight different aspects of life wellness and she’ll explain how doing so will help you reach your intentional and purposeful goals faster.
[Tweet “Now is the time most of us are setting New Year’s Resolutions or our goals for the year. However, I challenge you to focus on your intentions for the year instead.”]
Links Mentioned:
Download the Entrepreneur Commitment Week 2019 Action Planner
It’s time for another Entrepreneur Commitment Week!
For the third year in a row, we’re doing Entrepreneur Commitment Week together so we can all start 2019 on the right foot and know exactly what we should be focusing on for the rest of the year.
#ECW19 is a five-day challenge covering five core areas where you can intentionally commit to yourself to make sure 2019 is the best yet!
[Tweet “#ECW19 is a five-day challenge covering five core areas where you can intentionally commit to yourself to make sure 2019 is the best yet!“]
Links Mentioned:
Alex Miranda’s Launch in 2 Days Program
I don’t hide the fact that I’m a Christian but I also don’t regularly talk about it on the podcast.
However, I do strongly believe in being transparent about your core beliefs when you’re in a place of leadership and, seeing that it’s Easter week, I felt the need to address the often-confusing dilemma of mixing your faith with your business.
Alex Miranda is a former Miami nightclub promoter who, after having a “come to Jesus” moment, left the nightclubs behind to start the Daily Godpreneur; a personal development brand for Christian entrepreneurs.
One topic that’s always been of interest to me as a Christian entrepreneur, is the balance between needing money but not worshiping it.
During part of our conversation, Alex summed it beautifully when he said, “The profits are a byproduct of me doing what I’m born to do.”
[Tweet “The profits are a byproduct of me doing what I’m born to do.“]
Links Mentioned:
Alex Miranda’s Program | Launch in 2 Days
Alex Miranda’s Book | Discovering Your Calling as an Entrepreneur
This episode contains explicit language.
Download April Beach’s Life-First Yearly Calendar
It’s taken me 15 years to perfect the art of being able to plan out an entire year of my business ahead of time.
Today, I’m sharing what I learned over all that time so you can know how to do the same thing!
While planning out an entire year ahead of time can benefit everyone, it’s especially critical if you’re planning, launching, or have already launched your business but feel a little over the place.
Here is a little secret for you …
In order to create a life-first business, you actually have to put your life first.
I know that can seem scary when you’re not making money yet or not hitting your financial goals but it’s incredibly important to the success of your business.
What better way to put your life first than by actually scheduling right into your business?
In addition to helping keep your priorities straight, planning all of 2018 ahead of time, will help you stay focused, know exactly what to work on and when, allow time for professional development, and have more control over your schedule.
[Tweet “In order to create a life-first business, you actually have to put your life first.“]
Links Mentioned:
This episode contains explicit language.
Check out my ICA Masterclass
The first thing I need to say is thank you. Thank you for continuing to tune in. For sharing the show with others. For connecting with me on other platforms. And, for sharing how much this show means to you.
I thought long and hard about how I wanted to celebrate this incredible milestone and then I realized, it had be about you.
This show wouldn’t have reached 100 episodes if it weren’t for you, my amazing listeners, and the only way I can celebrate that is by sharing some of your stories.
The four women featured in this special episode are your sisters. They’re in the trenches building their business just like you.
You’ll hear from Kelly Bond; who talks about “rewilding” herself. As a former extreme athlete turned mother and entrepreneur, she’s finding her way back to her wild side and creating a business that will help other women do the same.
You’ll also hear from Monica Miller. Monica has been in business for a few years but is choosing to completely pivot her ideal client avatar and utilize a local market to grow her online business.
You’ll also hear from Paty Mariposa. The last year has seen Paty turn a hobby into a business, epically fail at her first big launch, and then have her most profitable week-to-date.
Lastly, you’ll also hear from Ali Zabel. While in business school, Ali never dreamed having children would become a priority over her career … until she held her baby in her arms for the first time and realized she needed to design a business that would fit her newly aligned priorities.
[Tweet “The four women featured in this special episode are your sisters. They’re in the trenches building their business just like you.“]
Links Mentioned:
![Episode 147: How to Become A Podcast Guest And Land (Almost) Any Show You Want To Grow Your Business – with April Beach [Episode 147]](https://sweetlifepodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/SweetLife_Entrepreneur_Podcast-_-Pete-Vargas-How-to-become-a-podcast-guest-to-grow-your-business-1.png)
