To wrap up this Maintenance Mode theme, I wanted to take you behind the scenes with my executive producer, Sean McMullin, and talk about what I learned from all my interviews over the last few months and what I experimented with and tried out in my own business.
Marie and I talk about consistency and how critical it was to her success with Notion, her course, and community. And how discovering she was neurodivergent explained so much about how her brain worked and has helped her figure out how to set up systems that work the way she does.
Margo and I have both quit businesses. And in this interview that we originally recorded in September of 2019, we explore what it meant to quit and how we each realized it was time to let go.
If consistency is the goal, building habits is how you accomplish it. Sarah Von Bargen uses habits to make sure they're sticking to that purpose. Habits have been a critical component in her own business success and in the success of her students, too.
The point of maintenance mode is to give you time and space to take a REAL break. Not a vacation where you're checking your email or you're stuck on your laptop kind of break. But a real, genuine break.
India and I talk about her evolution as a leader and how hiring and finding the right fit was critical to the growth of her agency and for her to be able to step back from doing all the things.
In order to get your business into maintenance mode–and build a stronger business while you're at it–you have to answer the question, "What if I'm not here?" Ideally, the answer is that nothing changes. That's the goal of maintenance mode, to me.
While sales are one of the first things business owners seem to want to outsource, sales are probably one of the very last pieces of your business operations that you should be handing off to people. Allison Davis is my go-to when it comes to sales and creating sustainable sales processes.
Consistency in your messaging means that you don't have to reinvent the wheel every quarter. It means you know what you need to say and you know to whom and how you need to say it. And it’s the first part of being able to prepare your business for maintenance mode.
Instead of shutting his business down and starting over when he realized that something needed to change for him, Mark Butler created a complementary business with a different business model–one that was designed for maintenance.
Racheal and I answer these questions: HOW do I get out of my own way? HOW do I stop getting distracted by every new idea that pops into my head? HOW do I keep myself from breaking it? WHAT am I supposed to DO all day if my business doesn’t need me to shop up and deliver?
Finka Jerkovic was forced by burnout and exhaustion to re-assess her capacity as a founder Managing her own energy as a business owner has been crucial in making sure that she is building a business that is supporting her, building a business based on work that she truly LOVES to do.
When Anna ran up against her capacity ceiling, she decided that she loved the work she was doing and didn't really want to change the way that she was working. But that something still had to change.
What if you ARE either a startup CEO or a maintenance one? Does that mean that your business will never be able to operate like clockwork? My guest today is Sarah Avenir, author and the CEO of &yet, a marketing and messaging agency. And she's been on both sides of this debate.
Creating scalable systems isn't necessarily intuitive and it runs counter to most of our narratives about how hustling hard and creating more is the path to success. I propose that the path to success is actually radical consistency!
I wanted to figure out what maintenance mode means to different people and what it looks like in different kinds of businesses. I started asking podcast guests and people around me what maintenance mode meant to them and I never got the same answer twice.
This week I'm revisiting my interview with Michelle Warner – one of the Best of Break The Ceiling!
For the next three weeks, I'm going to re-release episodes that are the best cuts from three of my very favorite Break The Ceiling Episodes. This week, I'm revisiting my interview with Charlie Gilkey.
For the next three weeks, I'm going to re-release episodes that are the best cuts from three of my very favorite Break The Ceiling Episodes. This week, I'm revisiting my interview with Justin Jackson, co-founder of transistor.fm, the company that hosts this podcast.
I wanted to bring on someone who has gone through the evaluation of their own marketing process from a perspective of privacy and implemented their OWN experiment.
Kim has been instrumental in helping me execute my privacy-focused marketing strategy and keeps me up to date on changes in the marketing and digital privacy world.
Jessica Robinson is an outsourced Chief Information Security Officer, founder, and CEO of PurePoint International and an expert in data security, cyber risk, and privacy.
How Paul and his partner Jack Ellis navigate the balance of promoting, marketing, and growing a company while still staying true to keeping data secure and while being respectful of individual's data AND transparent about what they're doing.
A lot of that work means really examining what success means, what enough means, and recognizing that, even with a good financial plan, as soon as you walk out the door with your plan, it'll change. But that doesn't mean you failed.
Rita Barry is a certified measurement marketer. Her boutique digital marketing optimization consultancy deals with numbers and measuring success all day long and the journey to and through enough has been one she's spent a LOT of time thinking about.
Once we understand how the system we live in impacts our relationship with money, we can start thinking about it in a much broader view -- and we can start considering using our businesses as a means to start evening out some of that inequality.
WHY do we buy what we buy? That's what I want to know. And, as it happens, I know someone who LOVES geeking out on buying and marketing psychology. When I want to nerd out on the psychology behind marketing, Margo Aaron is my go-to.
This episode originally aired in December of 2019. It's been one of the most listened-to episodes ever and I think that's because it creates a model that allows you to genuinely grow and scale a service business without having to give up the close 1-1 client relationship.
Hunter has a way of working with her clients that, when I experienced it as a client, was so effective that I actually shifted my OWN work with my 1:1 clients to the same model.
One of Rob’s core values is building relationships—and not just ANY relationships. To him, long term relationships with both his clients and with his team are essential to business. He treats clients as friends—folks he’s going to be working with for 5 or 10 years, at least.
Kate spends a lot of time exploring new techniques and strategies to create more equitable businesses and works with business owners to start thinking about how to implement them in their own business.
Alethea Cheng Fitzpatrick and I talk about what happens when things go BOOM and you have to figure out how to manage that boom in your business at a time when your personal situation might actually mean that you have less time than ever to spend in or on your business?
Lauren used to run an event planning business for tech, and after her best year ever in 2019, was ready to give 2020 a run for its money. Sadly, the opposite happened, but out of breakdowns come breakthroughs.
YOU built your business and most likely, it depends on you in some form or fashion to keep going. Even if you have a staff or other people that do a lot of the day-to-day work, they still look to you for direction. If you suddenly aren't there anymore, what happens?
Melody and I talk about why investing in developing skills to strengthen how we personally deal with change creates a huge impact on how we approach leading our businesses through change.
How DO we go about building up those change management muscles? How do we make ourselves and our business stronger and better able to weather this ever-changing environment? Meet Elatia Abate. She is an entrepreneur, educator, and future-forward strategist.
You can use no-code tools like ClickUp to streamline and automate your internal processes and enhance your communication with clients. You can also build digital products, help your students learn more effectively, and add to diversity your revenue streams. Layla is ALL IN with ClickUp.
This week, we're talking about using no-code tools to actually build your own custom software products. My guest today is the queen of this. Brittany Berger is the founder of Work Brighter, a digital media company that helps productive unicorns go beyond working smarter to a version of pro
No-code or low-code tools–Jason and I are talking about the tools that have been built specifically to enable YOU, someone with no background or experience in building software, to build your own custom tools.
I'm taking you behind the scenes to talk through how and why I decided to invest in starting this podcast, how it all works behind the scenes, and a look back a year into podcasting. To help me answer the question I'm talking with my friend Tara McMullin.
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I invited Andréa Jones—host of the Savvy Social podcast, creator of the Savvy Social School, and an expert at social media—to talk all about measuring the ROI on your investments even if there isn’t a straight line from investment to payoff.
Today, I’m talking with two guests, Nancy Jane Smith and Bonnie Gillespie, about how you balance the financial health of your business against your values and what to do when they come in conflict.
We all have a process we go through when we're thinking through new investments in our business. Whether you're conscious of your process or not... it's there. Today we are talking with Beryl Young about how she goes about investing and how she arrived at her process.
Michelle shares some of the significant investments she's made in her business that had a long payoff, her approach for evaluating investments in her business, and her view on the intangible, long-term benefits of those investments.
No stranger to making hard decisions and priming herself for growth, Emily Thompson talks about how hiring the right people for the right positions with the right mix of skills has made her business more efficient, more effective, and more profitable.
Mel Richards shares with us how her choice of software has helped her scale her company, increase profits, and deliver better results for her clients.
Tamara Kemper and I talk about how a rock-solid process allows you to deliver better service to your clients, onboard team members with ease, deliver projects and services more profitably, free up time for you and your team, and use software to automate tasks.
Every part of your business is interconnected with other areas of your business and Ashley Gartland is back on the show to talk about how your default decisions impact this business ecosystem.
Katie Hunt, founder of Proof to Product, helps product-based businesses create product lines, sell wholesale, and build stronger businesses. She has a podcast, courses, masterminds, coaching, conferences, and yes, a community.
Margy looked at her business and realized that 1:1 services was no longer the best delivery option for her clients and it wasn’t the business she wanted to be running. Creating the ScholarShape community was the natural evolution.
Harnessing your IP isn't the ONLY way you could add additional revenue or build resilience into your business. Sophie Bujold has another option: building a community product around your business.
We're talking about how to build some more resilience into your business model by using work you've already done—your intellectual property—and turning it into another source of revenue for your business.
The importance of accounting, bookkeeping, and understanding your taxes – Luke Frye was the first accountant at Bench.co and has been helping entrepreneurs with their accounting and taxes for nearly a decade.
Priya Malani's goal is to change the way young professionals think about money by empowering them to get their financial sh*t together.
Jacquette and I talk about financial risks, resilience, and the relationship between the two.
Charlie and I tackle not just getting out of your own way but ALSO how to get out of your team's way and how the stage your business is in affects the roadblocks you'll run up against.
Jason Van Orden is a consultant, trainer, and strategist who helps thought leaders reach larger audiences. He's created multiple successful brands, launched over 60 online courses, taught more than 10,000 entrepreneurs, and has over 8 million podcast downloads.
Nicole's important work is in combining therapeutic processes with business coaching to help entrepreneurs build emotionally sustainable, and financially stable businesses.
We're talking money. Money blocks, money mindset, and how to avoid letting your own money stories determine the course of your business.
Eliminating all that stuff on the to-do list that doesn't really matter frees up space to breathe, to think and act strategically, and to get the hell out of your own way.
With systems or technology or new team members usually directly stem from the owner. Their weaknesses have become the businesses weaknesses. And by identifying those weaknesses, we can put systems in place to specifically counteract their unique issues.
Having project managers as a specific position on your team is a choice that can drive what your business looks like. It's a choice that can ultimately determine what your position as a founder looks like. Are you a manager of managers? Do you directly work with clients?
We're talking about why you would pick one particular software tool over another, the importance of making sure the software you pick works with your brain, and how to avoid sabotaging yourself with getting distracted by the latest shiny new tool.
Hailey comes to each of her clients with a deep appreciation for who they are as individuals. With Hailey, client experience is built into every touchpoint. When I was thinking about doing an episode about project management vs client management, she was the first person I thought of.
Lauren and I chat about how the craziness around coronavirus has affected her events business. We talk about how that's impacting her cash flow and her approach to finances and how Lauren built some great financial processes into her business that are serving her well during this time.
You don’t have to look like the other businesses in your industry to learn from them. Justin and I talk about how to apply software metrics to service businesses & how to identify the right opportunity at the right time.
Maggie Patterson and I talk about all the different things she's tracking, how she tracks them, and how she's integrated what she learns into her growth strategy. We also talk about how she gets over the mental hurdle of “but, I don't wanna” and gets herself to actually track data.
I talk with Kathleen Shannon about how to approach data when you identify as more of a creative person and less as someone with a data-first mindset.
Karyn Kelbaugh is a squishy data specialist - we talk about how actively collecting your clients’ perspectives helps paint a more accurate picture of what's really going on with your business and how to integrate that perspective in a meaningful way
Rob Howard has one simple metric for measuring the financial health of his business: profit per hour per client. Tracking that metric has changed how I evaluated and measured my own business and has become something I incorporate into my clients’ businesses as well.
Rita & I talk about the downstream effects of your pricing choices. We look at how it affects your sales process, your proposal process, your profit, your cash flow and, yep, even the other software you might choose to use in your business.
Practice Ignition is a tool I use in my own business, and with most of my clients because it makes onboarding a client and accepting payments so easy. Jaime has been using Practice Ignition for the last few years at Tier One. We talk the good, the bad and what we wish PI would improve.
Getting paid by clients is the #1 most important part of the workflow in a service business. If you don’t get paid, eventually, you won’t have a business. But how you go about getting paid – now that’s where some magic can really happen.
Dana Kaye and I talk about how she went about making that transition from an hourly pricing model to a value-based model. We talk about how the change affected every area of her business and the impact that thinking about the administrative costs of pricing your services can have on yours.
Greg Hickman realized that the systems he developed behind-the-scenes to streamline and productize his own service were actually much more valuable if he transformed them into a system that he could actually train his clients on.
I talked with Parker about how he and his business partner at Evolved Finance buck convention and deliver their monthly bookkeeping service without having regularly scheduled calls.
I talked with Ashley Gartland and Nancy Jane Smith about how they use Voxer to communicate with their clients. Primarily a voice messaging app, Voxer allows them to replace both email and in-person meetings, helping them save time and streamline the way their clients receive value.
I talk with business coach Ashley Gartland and marketing & operations project manager Hailey Thomas about their different approaches to delivering intensive-style offerings.
Jake Jorgovan focuses on productizing his service delivery so he can operate efficiently at scale. These productized services are built on solid processes, procedures, and standardized systems behind the scenes.
Lacey Sites uses a revenue-sharing pricing structure that allows her to scale her one-on-one coaching business without adding more clients all while still dramatically growing her profits.
The crux of the proposal process is reducing your sales time. Rob has developed a system that allows him to give accurate quotes on the initial call and send out proposals within 15 minutes of getting off that call.
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In this episode, I talk with Brittany Berger about establishing boundaries in her business so she can ensure that she has the capacity needed to help her clients go beyond just working smarter to a better version of productivity.
Michelle Warner and I talk about how we both use opting-out as a tool to help our clients become more profitable and efficient.
Sometimes it's easier and simpler to just opt out, choose NOT to do the thing and default to the simplest solution.
Susan and Tara talk about why and when you should review your software tools, and how you can really use software to help automate your operations and address some operational capacity issues.
Want to see what can really happen when you make very conscious choices about how to run your business? Check out this episode with Pia Silva. We talk about pricing, increasing your value and about skipping all the stuff that you don’t HAVE to do.
When do you cross the chasm from experimentation entrepreneur mode to a business model that's designed to grow, and how do you not drive yourself crazy along the way?
There’s the business you COULD run, and there’s the business you SHOULD run. How do you know when you’re just in “the dip”, or when you’re running a business that’s never going to be the business that you want to run and it’s time to do something else?
Tara and Susan dig into why the default decisions you make at the beginning of your small business may actually be limiting your ability to grow, and why not every framework or management tool works the same for each business.
