The Fierce Business Babe Podcast Ep 298: How to Prep for Your Next Level

Today, I am diving into everything you need to know about preparing for your next level in business. We are going to chat about facing new challenges and thinking ahead. I’m also going to share some of the top tricks I’ve learned to help you on your journey.

HOW TO PREP FOR YOUR NEXT LEVEL

BY: MELISSA LIN

Welcome back to another episode of The Fierce Business Babe Podcast. We are back and I'm so excited. It has been about two weeks since I've recorded a podcast episode and I'm so excited to get back into it. Today is all about how to prep for your next level. This is an episode that I wish I had years and years ago as I was starting to take my business to the next level. Something that I have learned over the years is that as you start to grow and step into your next level, you will face new challenges that you've never faced before. If there was a way to prepare for some of those challenges that may come along the way, why not prepare for it? That's exactly what this episode is going to be all about. My goal is to help you start to prep for your next level in your business because I have been there. I have so many tips and tricks to help you skip over some of those road bumps. I'm going to share the top two or three with you so that you can start to really think into the future for your business. We spend quite a bit of time every single month prepping for the next quarter of the next year. We're always planning ahead. I want to be able to support you with this as well.

I have faced so many different road bumps over the years being in the industry and online space for as long as I have. I wanted to share these things with you because they may help you get to where you want to go even faster, which really is the goal. So let's get into today's episode. We're going to get all into some mindset shifts for your next level, structure of your next level in your business, including program structures, shifting your CEO role as your business grows, and so much more.

NEXT LEVEL MINDSET SHIFTS

I really want to start by chatting about some mindset shifts for your next level in your business. As my business has continued to grow over the years, I have needed to make some shifts in all areas of my business. Typically when your business grows it means that you're supporting and impacting more people. Part of what will need to happen is you'll need to make sure that you can actually support more people on the back of your business. This means you need the systems and the team members to support the number of clients coming in, which we will talk about a little later in today's episode. The other part is that you'll need to energetically be able to hold space for more people as your business continues to grow. I want to share a few questions I like to ask my clients as they start to step into those next levels, especially if it happens quickly. The first one is, what needs to happen for you to be available to serve in your new level? Is this more self-care? Is this more play, more fun? Is this more support from new team members? Is this taking more time away from the business? For me personally, it's usually a mix of all of those. I really want you to ask yourself that question. What needs to happen for you to be available to serve in your new level?

As you step into your new levels, launching and sales will get easier. I was talking to some clients about this this morning and quite a few clients were asking, will my launch actually fill? How do I know if it's going to fill? Am I doing all of the right things? As you start to step into your next level, that question is going to start to shift to, what do I need to do once it does fill? At the end of the day, your success is inevitable. You will be successful as long as you keep going and keep trying. So, what do I need to do once my program fills? I want you to start his shift into that mindset. That's something that's really supported me as I've continued to grow. One of the biggest things I noticed as I continued to hit these new levels in my business was that the most important factor was how I was doing, how I was feeling. In the beginning stages of your business, it's a lot of mindset and strategy.

Once you get the hang of that strategy, you will continue to make some tweaks here and there, because yes you will continue to pivot. It's not like you create one business model and that grows forever on its own. You get to continue to make tweaks and pivot when things are going on in the world. Maybe you need to pivot your messaging or how your sales process looks. There are always things to tweak. You get to adapt as the world continues to change and social media continues to change. You really get to start to amplify everything you're doing. Many of us entrepreneurs can get distracted with the go, go, go and forget about that most important piece, making sure that you're taking care of you. As you head into your next big launch, you get to make sure that your cup is filled. As you get ready to double or triple your next enrollment cycle, you get to make sure that you're getting plenty of rest. As you’re hitting bigger numbers, you get to make sure you're celebrating every step of the way.

I want to share with you some of my favorite mantras that have truly supported me as I step into my new levels. One of my favorites is, “I can handle anything that comes my way.” I deeply, deeply believe this. There have definitely been moments in my business where I didn't feel like I could handle everything. Something I want to share with you is that if something is feeling hard or challenging in this moment, feel those emotions. Six months from now you're going to look back at that challenge and it is not going to feel nearly as hard. That is something that I can definitely promise. I have been through quite a bit in my business and faced a lot of challenges I wasn't expecting. Another mantra that I love is, “the more fun I have, the more money I make.” Another one is, “people love to pay me.” Those are some of my favorite mantras. I would love to hear what some of yours are. If you have some, feel free to send them over to me. Start to get ready for your next level because it's right around the corner for you.

STRUCTURING YOUR NEXT LEVEL

Now we can get into what that next level really looks like in terms of programs, teams, and the back end of your business. What actually needs to happen in your business to be ready for that next level? I want you to take a look at your current offers in your business. Maybe it's a one-on-one coaching package that you have. Maybe it's a group coaching package, a course, or digital downloads. Maybe you have a shop business or digital shop business. Whichever it may be, I want you to imagine that your next enrollment cycle will be three times as many enrollments. Let's say your current group program you run every quarter typically brings in 10 new clients, imagine that it brought in 30 for your next. If you're filling your one-on-one, imagine that you signed five new one-on-one clients tomorrow.

I want you to zoom out and really ask yourself, how would your business handle it? Can your onboarding process support that many enrollments right now? If we handed you 20 clients tomorrow, can your onboarding process actually support that right now? Is your onboarding process 100% manual at the moment? If it is, then it probably can't support 20 new clients tomorrow unless you or a team member manually onboarded everybody. Would you have enough space in your calendar to support the incoming coaching calls if you have a coaching business? Can your support email inbox handle all of the incoming inquiries that you may start to receive? As you work with more clients there will be more questions in your inbox. Can your email inbox handle that? Is your support team getting back to clients within 24 hours? That's always our goal. If you were handed 30 new clients tomorrow, would you want your program to be structured the same way? These are just a few examples of questions you can ask yourself. Brainstorm what you would do differently if your business did double or triple overnight so you can start to make some of these preparations early.

For example, we actually have a scalability plan. This is an exercise we help our clients through, and what it does is it helps our clients create their scalability plan so they know exactly what will shift in their programs once it hits 50 clients, 100 clients, and beyond. Your programs don't need to run the same as you scale your business. You may want to start thinking about that now and having a game plan so that when you do hit 50 clients in your group program, you know you'll be needing to hire another support coach or another virtual assistant to support other areas in your business. These are things I want you to start to think about. You can spend an hour a week or 30 minutes a week planning for that next level, as long as we're spending some type of time on it.

Something else I’ll share with you is I have always always loved being extremely involved in my programs and actually in my programs with my clients. If you've ever worked with me you know that I'm not the type of coach to just enroll clients and have others teach them. I run various coaching calls in every single one of my programs and I'm hands-on with clients at all levels. You can also do this or something similar in your business without spending 100 hours coaching every single week. Maybe you'll need to shift some of your calls that you're running. Maybe you’ll do two out of four each month and you can have support coaches run the other two. Get creative, have fun with it. As I love to remind my clients, there are no rules. You don't need to do a coaching call every single week, there are zero rules. This is your business. You get to make up the rules. Have some fun breaking some of those rules from time to time.

We’ve talked about some mindset shifts you can make and some of my favorite mantras. We’ve also talked a little bit about how programs can shift and the back end of your business. Do you need to add a little more automation into your business so that you can handle and support more clients? For example, our entire onboarding process and offboarding process is automated. When a client enrolls in one of our programs, they’re immediately enrolled into the coursehub, depending on the program. They're immediately sent a welcome email and immediately granted access to our Slack channel or Voxer depending on what program. The entire process is very hands-off, so if we were handed 100 clients tomorrow, we could support 100 brand new clients tomorrow. So again, start to think and plan ahead and put it together in a Google doc as your future plan for some of your programs. It may look different for each of your programs that you have.

SHIFTING YOUR CEO ROLE

Now let's get into how to start to shift your CEO role as you grow, because it will shift. Some of the biggest things that have shifted in my business as we've grown include hiring more team members, automating a lot more of our business, making tweaks to how our programs run, and what my role as CEO looks like. When I first started my business I was wearing a million different hats and that meant my CEO role was very different than how it looks today. Back then I was the CEO, the coach, the marketer, the accountant, the graphic designer, the sales person, the website designer, the admin task person, the support email inbox manager, I did everything. I was a one-woman show when I first started. As my business has grown, my role has shifted a lot. Now my big focus points are coaching, future planning, and some content creation because those are my zones of genius and what I love doing. They're also mostly the things that only I can do in my business.

So what does your role as CEO look like in your business right now? What will this look like when you're supporting three times as many clients, ten times as many clients? Start planning and thinking ahead so that you're ready when your next level gets here, because it will. It is right around the corner. I remember when I first hit six figures in my business, I had zero automation. It’s so funny thinking back to it. I’m not sure how I had zero automation in my business. I was doing nearly everything manually and literally could not handle the influx of clients by myself anymore. I hit such a big period of burnout because the back end of my business was not ready, it really wasn't. Now my back end is so ready for the next level. It’s ready for multiple seven figures and probably ready for eight figures as well. We’re always planning for that next level. If you're unsure about what this looks like for your business, feel free to send me a DM on Instagram. We can definitely chat about it and see which my programs would best support you because this is exactly what we support our clients with.

So today we’ve touched on so many things. We’ve talked about mindset shifts for your next level, structure of your next level in your business, including programs, teams, and the back end, shifting your CEO role as your business grows, and so much more. We are already getting ready for next week's episode and I cannot wait to share it with you. We will see you next week in another brand new episode of The Fierce Business Babe Podcast bright and early next Monday morning.

Topics we cover include:

Overcoming challenges
Prepping ahead
Supporting more clients

And so much more!

Times to check out:

(10:18) Mindset shifts for next level

(13:00) Overcoming challenges

(16:44) Prepping ahead

(19:20) Supporting more clients

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