What's the right business model for your small business? Which model will afford you the financial sustainability you crave with the type of work, flexibility, and satisfaction you value? And do you really need to create an online course or membership site...
Doing more and inevitably making things more complex is the main tool we’ve been trained to use.
This leads to all sorts of predictable challenges, though—challenges like the ones I talked about last week with Brigitte Lyons & Sophy Dale—things like scope creep, lack of traction, unsustainable working hours, and less revenue.
It can also lead to leaky boundaries, resentment, anxiety, relationship troubles, and, yes, burnout.
If you identified with their stories and the consequences of Brigitte & Sophy’s more complex businesses, keep listening. This week, we’re talking about what they did to simplify and the incredible results they’ve created.
And if you’re wondering whether this could be the problem you’re experiencing… that you might have made things harder and more complex than they needed to be… but you’re not quite sure yet…
I’d be willing to go out on a limb and say, “Yep, that’s probably true.”
Today’s conversation should give you hope.
Alright, let’s dive into how Brigitte & Sophy actually restructured things, how doing business is different today, and what the results have been—hint: they’re both making more money.
I have a reputation for being a decisive, proactive, making-things-happen kind of person. I’m quite proud of this. But really? It’s a facade. What others admire as fearless action-taking is just careful branding. I’m actually an anxious reactor. Oof. Even though I...
Today, we’re kicking off both a series on simplifying and a set of two episodes with businesses owners who have direct experience with dramatically simplifying their businesses—and in turn, creating immense growth.
Brigitte Lyons is the founder of Podcast Ally, a PR agency specializing in getting experts and idea people booked on podcasts.
Sophy Dale is a copywriting mentor, messaging coach, and brand storyteller who helps coaches, designers, and course-creators write compelling copy.
Both Brigitte and Sophy know what it’s like to run complicated, bloated businesses.
And both of them figured out what the real problem was they wanted to solve. For Brigitte, it was scope creep that caused her to always be reinventing systems and getting involved in projects she shouldn’t have. For Sophy, it was a lack of traction due to the fact that she was actually running three businesses so no one quite knew what she was offering when!
In this episode, we’re going to get into how they ended up with complex businesses in the first place, how they identified the need to simplify, and what the process of actually letting go of that complication looked like.
In next week’s episode, we’ll dive into how they actually restructured things, how doing business is different today, and what the results have been—hint: they’re both making more money.
More work doesn’t equal more money. More offers don’t equal more money. More marketing doesn’t equal more money. More lead magnets, more email subscribers, or more followers don’t equal more money. And, the flip side is also true. Making more money probably doesn’t...
Photo by Wonderlane on Unsplash If you’re a freelancer, contractor, or micro business owner, you’re about to hear a lot about the PRO Act—which recently passed the U.S. House of Representatives. The PRO Act is designed to revitalize the labor movement by...
Sometimes it can feel like you don't find opportunity, opportunity finds...
This week, my guest is Justine Clay, a business coach for creatives. Justine is one of the most thoughtful decision-makers I know. And her story proves that taking the time to really weigh your options doesn’t mean you’ll never take a big step in a new direction.
In fact, during this conversation, you’re going to hear about a number of really big opportunities that Justine made—including moving to the US with her rebound boyfriend, taking a job she had no experience with, starting her own business, and then making a big pivot in the midst of the Great Recession.
Justine shares how she processes her opportunities and, ultimately, how she makes the choices she makes.
“Marketing” is a giant catch-all term. When we’re doing “marketing,” what are we really doing? You’ve probably come to associate “marketing” with activities like posting on social media, writing emails or articles, and maybe offering free downloads or workshops. You...
Can you navigate a financially sustainable way to moving from 1:1 client services to more flexible, leveraged offers?
Yes, of course. And here’s how I would do it.
Instead of figuring out what stack of offers is going to supposedly add up to the revenue you’re generating from client services, put your effort into figuring out what 1 offer is going to be able to eventually grow into a revenue stream that can replace what you’re generating now.
Don’t figure out how to generate $10,000 at a time with multiple offers. Experiment with ideas that you can imagine growing to $100k of revenue or more. You’ll still have to try some things out–and it’s likely that the journey will be a little windy and involve some backtracking. But you’ll have a much longer-term view of your business’s financial sustainability in the end–and that is going to feel oh-so-good.
Now, this kind of thinking still applies no matter the field you’re in or the business model you’ve built til now. If you want the opportunity to grow your business, you need to think about long-term financial sustainability–not just what’s working right now.
To take this point home, I want to revisit a conversation I had with Jordan Gill, founder of Systems Saved Me, in 2019. Jordan found herself in a position that’s familiar to many service providers; she was trading dollars for hours and the path to growth just wasn’t clear.
So she started to pay close attention to how her clients were actually using her services and considered how she could bring them an experience that would actually create better, longer-lasting results.
After considering the possibilities, Jordan found her opportunity. She shifted her business model away from hourly client services to results-oriented VIP days. She created a more financially sustainable business by finding a way to make the numbers add up without adding MORE to her workload or burden the business’s operational sustainability.
You’ll hear all about that—plus how she decided on pricing and how this shift has impacted her personal sustainability in this conversation.
Host of What Works
Tara is a podcaster, small business community leader, strategist, and speaker. She’s been helping small business owners build stronger businesses for over a decade.
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