Set up for success

Owning a business is a funny thing. At times it can be the most stressful piece of your life, but it also leads you to the highest potential upside in both controlling your time and earning potential. A payoff I’m willing to shoot my shot at. 

For me personally, that stress used to be magnified by vacations… I didn’t look at them as something I could use to relax. All I could do really was worry about what was waiting for me back at home. 

But something changed for me on my most recent trip. It was proof that we aren’t the same business in 2024 compared to the one we were in 2023.

In 2023, when my wife and I went on a two-week vacation, we were still in the building phase. Not just building the company, but building authority in the space that we reside in. We also didn’t have many systems in place, as a lot of what we did was manually taken care of. Now, keep in mind I think you absolutely NEED to go through this phase as a business owner so that you actually know what you want your systems (recent buzz word) to accomplish.

What this 2023 setup meant for me was that my business was entirely reliant on ME! There’s a good and bad to that, but in this case, it led to one of our lowest revenue months of the year… which can kind of compound the stressors as an entrepreneur. 

2024 has been a much different focus for us as a company. It’s been about improving our offers, understanding our clients better, figuring out how we can create MORE without being so involved in creation. Overall it’s been an amazing transformation and all of the people who have contributed have played an integral role in it (thank you, team!).

About 1 month ago now, I left for another 2-week vacation. I’ll be honest, I had a lot of the same stressors running through my head. But, this year, I just EXPECTED a repeat of 2023 in anticipation… a lower month just like the year prior… but the situation wasn’t the same… We were more mature as a company, we had invested A LOT in the business both via people and systems to replicate actions of people that helped nurture our audience while I was traveling. It was amazing to see it in action.

So I want to share some of the changes we made and some of the support we have on the horizons for our clients:

1. Content batching - This year ALL of my content was batched, written, and scheduled prior to leaving for our trip. A nice little bonus hack, for those of you who are perfectionists out there… instead of saving your content to “drafts” schedule it… let the automation do the hard part of hitting “post” for you.
2. Delegation - Our team does have a lot more support this year. While we were gone, there was SO much progress on our projects in the pipeline.
3. Automations - It has been a game changer to capitalize on almost immediate contact with a new audience that reaches out with interest to work with us. Here’s the hard part - you can’t automate so much that you come across as a robotic company. I also spent the better portion of the last two quarters testing our sequences manually to understand what would get the best response rates and engagement.

I share this with you to let you know that where you want to be doesn’t happen overnight. It happens with a consistent commitment to your mission and putting the understanding of the process over the results for a bit. If you do that, I promise you, the results WILL come.

Now, for those of you interested in #3 listed above to help grow your business, we have an exciting partnership that we will be launching in June. Keep your eyes and ears open.

We’re just getting started.