The Fierce Business Babe Podcast Ep 289: How to Let It Be Easy In Your Business
Today, I am diving into how you can let the hustle of creating a successful business be easier. We are going to chat about how I was able to make shifts to make my business easier to run and how you can do the same in your business. I’ll also be sharing three specific ways you can start to bring ease into your business today.
HOW TO LET IT BE EASY IN BUSINESS
BY: MELISSA LIN
Welcome back to another episode of The Fierce Business Babe Podcast. In today's episode we're going to be getting all into how to let it be easy, specifically in your business. Many of us have been told that in order to be successful you have to hustle. You have to work hard and keep working hard. Put your head down and just go, go, go. That hustle mentality has been pushed into our heads. Whether it's going to school and working hard; getting a job and working hard; starting your business and just work, work, work until you see success. I was taught that for most of my life from my parents, teachers, mentors, counselors, and everyone around me. That's what I knew– go to school, work hard, and keep your head down, it will pay off eventually. I was told to just keep hustling, you can rest when you retire. How fun does that sound, right? We’ve been taught to not rest. This is something we can start to unlearn and rewire starting today if it's something that you feel is still wired in you and it's not really serving you.
As you'll learn in today's episode, that's how I was at the very beginning of my business; Everything was just busy and go, go, go. If you've listened to any of my earlier podcast episodes, I've shared that when I was in my engineering job, I was just hustling, hustling, hustling as I was getting my business going. Yes, there’s going to be work as you get your business going, but I was to the point where I was thinking client calls before work, on my lunch break, and after work. I wasn’t really giving myself any rest or balance. I wasn’t allowing the opportunity for it to be easier, and we're going to get all into that and how things have become so much easier after I've made quite a few shifts in my business over the years. In today’s episode I want to talk about how business can be easy; what this can look like behind the scenes; how it can be easy to sign new clients all week long; how it can be easy to support twice as many clients as you do now; and how it can be easy to expand your containers in your business. There are lots of things we are going to get into today, I’m super excited. This episode is all about how to shift into ease, what ease really looks like in my business, three ways to make things easier in your business, and so much more.
WHAT EASE LOOKS LIKE
The first thing I really want to chat about is how to shift into ease. Ease looks very different to each person and may look very different from one business to another. For me, ease looks like being more efficient with our business tasks and having very easy to repeat launches and sale systems. Ease looks like having more support from my team, maybe even adding in more team members. To some ease looks like delegating all of their admin work or social media work. It may look like automating a lot of these tasks. To some, letting it be easy looks like working three days a week. There are a lot of different ways to create more ease in your business and it’s going to look a little different for each of us. I want you to ask yourself, what does letting it be easy mean to you? What are some things that can potentially shift for you and your business to make things easier?
Sometimes we are keeping ourselves distracted and busy with things that are actually making it harder for us, and I have done this many times before. One quick example of this is leaning into automation to improve your client experience. I know that technology may overwhelm many of us, and maybe we avoid it for that reason, however, it can make things so much easier. I'm going to share some more of the behind-the-scenes of my business and the things we've implemented to make things easier a little later in today's episode for you.
One of the biggest ways I like to shift into ease is by reminding myself that I'm not just here for the quick wins, I'm here for the long game in my business. I'm here to continue to grow and scale my business year after year. I'm here to build my business assets, not just create everything and then be done. Reminding myself that I'm here for the long haul really helps me remember that there's always more time. There's always more to do and it doesn't all need to be done today. I personally have always had this battle with time since I was a little girl. I've never felt like there was enough time. I felt like I had to sit and work, work, work before I could go and play. That's something that I've been working on since I started my business back in 2014. I’ve definitely shifted so much since 2014. I deeply believe that you can have a successful business without sacrificing what's important to you. I believe that you can grow your business without doubling the amount of time you spend in your business. My business has continued to grow year after year and I'm working less and less each year. What really helps me release that hustle mentality that I've had in the past is reminding myself that it doesn't all get done in 24 hours. Starting, growing, and scaling your business does not happen in 24 hours. We’re here for the long haul, so just focusing on one thing each day is going to help move the needle forward, not one hundred things. I know how excited we can get when we have a new idea or a new project and you want to do it all on the first day, but remind yourself it's not all going to get done in one day. It does not need to be finished in one day. Sometimes we need to slow down before we can speed up and grow the business.
I want to share some of my favorite mantras that have really helped me shift into ease over the years. The first is that I can handle anything that comes my way. If you are a client of mine you’ve heard this many, many times, and I deeply believe it. I can handle anything that comes my way. You can handle anything that comes your way. Another mantra is that it only gets better and better from here. Another one is that everything feels lighter and easier when I'm supported. This support can come from team members, my business besties, from family, from friends, from my partner Rian, or from a mentor. There's a lot of different ways you can receive support in your life and in your business. Those are some of my favorite mantras and things that have helped me shift more into ease over the years.
WHAT EASE LOOKS LIKE IN MY BUSINESS
I want you to ask yourself again, what does letting it be easy mean to you? Is there anything that you can start to shift today to start getting closer to that? As you start to ponder on that and maybe even journal through that, I want to give you some examples and share with you what ease looks like in my business. The first big thing that has really created more ease for me in my business is creating processes and systems in my business. We have a system for almost everything that we do in our business. A little spoiler alert for you, you also have them in your business, they just may not be written out and automated. Everything that you do in your business has its own system. For example, if you are getting ready to create a post and post it on social media, you have a process for that. You brainstorm your caption and then you draft up your caption. After that you may edit it and create a graphic for it. Then you choose your hashtags and schedule it out on the later app or you post directly to Instagram. What you're doing is part of your system that you've created.
We have our own systems for almost everything in our business. We have content systems, marketing systems, sales systems, team systems, customer systems, and so much more. I want to give you a few examples of what that looks like so you can start to brainstorm. Maybe something that I share with you today is going to give you that lightbulb moment of, “if I had that things would feel so much easier for me in my business.” That's my goal. Again, we have so many systems and we've spent the past few years building them. We always want to be ready for the next level, so we have systems beyond what you can imagine. The first big bucket of stems that we have are our marketing systems. We have a lot of systems for social media to make social media easier. We have systems created to make our podcast creation easier. I record my podcast. Once it’s ready it gets handed off to my team and they take care of everything else. We have a whole system for it. We have an ads system. We also have lots of different systems for our sales and lead generation systems. We have launch templates and launch systems. We have systems for each of our programs. All of our flash sales and our workshops have their own system.
If you had a step-by-step or something that was very easy to follow or replicate every single time for one of these examples, things would feel so much easier in your business. One of these things can help improve your business in some way, whether it's giving you more time back or helping you get things done faster. I’ll go through a few more examples for you. The next is we've got tons of systems and things created around our foundations and also our assets of our business. Remember, we're here for the long haul. You're spending so much of your energy and money if you’re hiring someone to help you with your website and doing photoshoots for your sales pages or social media. You are creating all of these assets for your business that you get to keep and repurpose forever. We have systems for our branding, our website, and our sales pages. It’s very easy for anyone on our team to find them and use them for the business. We also have tons of support around our team. We have a step-by-step for onboarding a team member. We have a standard operating procedure (SOP) for all of these things. We have an area that shares all of the team roles so everybody knows what each person's team role is. We also have tons of systems that support our clients. We have an entire client care system. We have an entire onboarding and offboarding system for every single one of our programs. Everything is very organized. A lot of it is also very streamlined and automated, which means that it can be less hands-on and also gives me and my team members more time back to focus on other things that we need to focus on.
Again, start to ask yourself, what would make things easier in my business? What area of my business do I want to feel more at ease in? If you're onboarding new clients every single week, but you’re doing it all by hand, maybe that's taking up two hours of your time. All of that can be automated. Our entire onboarding and offboarding process is automated. It can all be automated and hands-off and still feel very personalized for your clients, you can have both. You can automate to make it easier for yourself and also create a wonderful experience for your clients. Lots of examples there, we can always go into more details on some of those on another podcast episode. We share tons of the behind-the-scenes of these specific things with our clients and support them and their businesses as well.
Another thing that really supports me in my business with creating ease is my team. My team members support me in so many areas of my business that aren't always my zone of genius. They support me in areas that help give me back more of my time. These include operations, sales, marketing, and support. I have so many different project-based team members as well.
The next thing that really creates ease in my business are my non-negotiables. Regardless of what happens during the day, if something comes up and I can’t lean into all of my business, as long as I achieve my non-negotiables I know I can walk away from the business for the day. I’ve talked about my non-negotiables before, but I'll quickly go through them with you again. The first is supporting my clients. They're always supported, regardless of what’s going on. The next is adding some type of value on my social platforms. The other is always selling in some form every single day. Those are always my non-negotiables, and again, a lot of that can be automated. We want to make things easier, so start with one or two non-negotiables every single day and then start to really compound and add on top of that.
ADDING EASE IN YOUR BUSINESS
Now let's get into three ways to add ease into your business. I've been seeing this big trend in the online space the past 6-12 months or so of creating new low ticket offers every single month and pivoting constantly. To me, that would feel absolutely exhausting. Again, ease looks very different to every single person. Do I make new offers from time to time? Definitely. I also have my signature programs that continue to stack onto each other, consistently bringing in more revenue in the business. I was actually joking with a client, but also not joking when I shared that you can create stability in your business by creating strong foundations and core programs. I have things running on autopilot. I have new leads and sales coming in on autopilot, which is amazing. It also gives me the space to create a course all about whatever I want, and that's what ease looks like to me. Ease is having that flexibility and the time to create a cat course if I wanted to. Am I going to do that? Probably not, but I could if I wanted to because I do have that flexibility and freedom because I’ve created all of those things that I shared with you.
The first way that I recommend to add ease into your business is to create offers that are easy to replicate and that you can continue to sell year after year. Instead of creating a new low-ticket offer every two weeks to try to get some cash flow, create something long-term. Again, we're here for the long haul. We're not here for a one-year business. You're here for the long-term business that is going to be here five years from now and continue to still be growing. Create offers that are easy to replicate, reuse, and sell year after year. My product suite is an example. I've got three to four core signature coaching programs available at the moment. I support women in all stages of their business, from the very beginning up to scaling to multiple six figures. I have a container for each level. I also have different courses that we’ll bring in once or twice throughout the year that we are bringing back out or repurposing. I open those doors for some of my signature courses once or twice a year. We have all of her email sequences and sales pages ready to go. We're not constantly pivoting or creating new offers and starting from scratch. Instead, we’re tweaking, refining, and improving. This creates a space for so much flexibility and also makes things easier.
The second way to add ease into your business is to create a sales process that can easily be repeated. For example, when somebody applies to work with me in one of my programs we have an entire sales process for this. My team and I receive and review the application. If the application is approved, then I will send that next step information to the applicant, we follow up, and then we onboard. It’s super easy, I’m not spending all day doing sales calls. I actually haven’t done a sales call in over three years now because we sell in other ways that aren't as time-consuming. It just gives me more space in my life and my business. There's a lot of different ways to do that, and I definitely have different podcast episodes for that. We dive even deeper in my coaching programs if that's something that you want to be able to do. We support our clients with that shift.
The third way to add ease into your business is by adding team members and systems into your business. Ask yourself, what are things that feel hard in your business right now? What are things that take the most amount of your time, yet not bringing in sales for you? These are the things that we can automate and delegate so that you can be spending your time bringing in more of the sales or the things that are going to move the needle forward at this moment.
Lots of things to start thinking about, but again, what’s going to make your business feel easier to you? It may look different from what I shared about what ease looks like in my business and that's totally okay. The goal is to help you make things easier. I would love to hear what you’re going to do to make things start to feel a little bit easier in your business. Feel free to send me a message on Instagram, I can definitely help you brainstorm as well. I cannot wait to hear what you are starting to put together to make things easier in your business. We have touched on how to shift into ease, what ease looks like in my business, three ways to make things easier in your business, and so much more. We are already getting ready for next week's episode and cannot wait to share with you. We will see you next week in another brand new episode of The Fierce Business Babe Podcast bright and early Monday morning!
Topics we cover include:
Shifting into ease
The hustle mindset
Finding ease in your business
And so much more!