Service Based Business Society Podcast

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher (00:02.542)
Hello and welcome to the Service-Based Business Society podcast. I am your host, Tiffany Anne Botcher. On our weekly episodes, we will dig into everything you need to know about scaling your service-based business without losing sleep. With my experience in creating over seven figures per month and a passion for marketing, finance, and automation, this show will provide tangible tips and techniques for scaling your business. Let's get started.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher (00:34.818)
first episode of 2024. You're joining us in the new studio and if you're not checking this out on YouTube, be sure to give us a follow.

the link to our channel is down in the show notes. Now, why am I saying, hey, come check us out on YouTube? Because we have a new recording studio. And that recording studio is actually the topic of today's episode because we're gonna talk all about how as entrepreneurs, we can get distracted. This studio is a perfect example of that. Now, I'm also an advocate for lifelong learning and choosing specific things that you wanna improve. But we're gonna go through a little bit why I did it

why it's a funny episode for the first episode of 2024. So in order to learn about the studio, the decisions, and what took place over the Christmas holidays, we need to go back. And we need to go back and know that one of our Q4 objectives was to really level up our content creation. Now this is pretty common in today's space. There it is a lot of content required in order to be in the online business space. Now you may say, I don't do a lot of content

creation and that's okay but for our businesses online marketing is a huge component to what we do so i wanted to level up our content it all kind of ties back into those summer plans i had a few yeses too many and that plan really kind of fell off the rails so here comes christmas break and i needed a new podcast mic my mic quality i wasn't happy with it i wanted a new mic but i didn't know which mic to get i

historically when it comes to mics have usually left it to the last minute. I know that I'm going to need a new mic. I haven't really decided by the time I need a new mic. It's like desperate like something has broken and now I'm going to drive down to the local office supply store, pick up whichever one seems the best of what's on the shelf. Not a lot of planning, not a lot of organization and really for someone who spends so much time on zoom, a mic is required. So I had this ad and it kept coming onto my Instagram.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher (02:43.012)
seeing this same guy talking about audio quality, video quality, and how just in a few simple steps you too could have very professional looking video audio quality. That sounds simple enough. And so, you know, there be the start of the process. Go back, I'd saved the ad. Fine, I go to the piece and I think I don't really want to spend the money but I do really want to buy the right thing this time. So, of course, it's called on-screen authority. I highly recommend for anyone who spends

that wants to really level up their content. Now, if you're thinking, Tiffany Anne, you don't sound very good. I would never take a course. This is the very first day. Let me tell the story. So number one, don't measure the success of the program by what you're listening to today because this is a work in progress and the story will convey that. We needed a new mic. Start listening to the program and it is broken down into some very incredible steps. We've got composition, just like the layout of the room. We've got lighting. We've got mic. We've got camera.

got teleprompter, we've got all of these different things and each of them are broken into sections as to like who can you like how do you use them, how do they apply, why are they important, which equipment they recommend. So I get out my notebook and I'm like okay composition we need to make some changes, lighting, a few changes, you know camera, I'm not gonna bother right now. You know I really just need that mic so you know let's get the mic sorted out, go through the whole program and I start ordering stuff on Amazon and pretty much

Now packages are arriving at our front door at an alarming rate and my husband is like what? What are we doing? And I was like so I signed up for this course, you know I wanted to get the new mic and so he's kind of side eyeing me because I won't lie there's a lot of packages. Also because Amazon, have you ever noticed that sometimes they use like a really big box for a really little item and you're like I don't really know that this is necessary. Think that this might be a little overzealous. And they also put only like one thing per package.

a few adapters, they were like these little cords, just a few inches long, patch cables and this and that, and so they're all arriving in one-off package. But one of the key pieces that I took from the course was that we needed to adjust where I was filming and the direction I was filming. And ultimately my office wasn't, it didn't really have the right layout. Cue a trip to IQ. So let's remember we were just getting a new mic. We just wanted to choose the right one. But now I'm all in and I'm like, you know what would be really great

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher (05:12.592)
like a new podcast episode's coming, we've got some great content to record, we've got some amazing guests, you know what? Now's the time. I say to my husband, here's the problem. My office is really not wide enough, the way that I have my desk configured. And so, you know, he says, no problem, we can turn the desk. So he and I are kinda talking about it, and it comes down to, we really need less natural light and more studio light. The program talks about how, you know, we can control studio lighting, it's much better.

And so we need to remove the window because ultimately I actually need to film the direction that the window would be behind me. Here on YouTube you can see I'm pointing at where the window would normally be. And so I said to my husband, I actually need there not to be a window here. And he laughs and he says, but there is a window there. And he's kind of thinking I've maybe lost it. And so I say, well, I have a plan and we're actually going to cover this window. It's not going to be permanent.

be adding some. And so we've covered the window, we've added in the additional distance that we need for the depth, and now it's time to get testing. I'll be honest, I could not get it all to work. I felt like I was always missing my... even though I made like a perfect list from the course, everyone has different equipment. You know, they are talking about using a Mac laptop in times, I have a Mac Studio, different ports, and I use all the ports on my computer. Many of the USB-C's

where one turns to more. And so ultimately I'm trying to make this work but every time I need to order something else it needs to come from Amazon. So ultimately the story concludes with the fact that it took way longer than I thought and it all started with the mic. Number one, you know, haven't really even got to do a whole lot of testing but I'm liking what I'm seeing so far. We're no longer using a webcam. Funny story on that one. The course says I could use my iPhone for a while. I have a great iPhone, one of the newer ones, nice camera on

We're not gonna do the camera right now. We did lights and the furniture and the this and the mic and all that, the camera's fine. Here's the problem. In order to use the setup, I could not actually reach my phone. It was like unusable while it was part of the workflow. And I was like, well, that's not gonna work. We've upgraded the camera, we've upgraded the mic, we've upgraded the studio and we are so in for 2024. Why do I tell you this long-winded story about the studio and how ultimately it didn't go exactly as planned?

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher (07:42.352)
How easy is it to start to feel like you have committed a certain amount and it's too late to go back? So for me, I'm like, well, once I invested in the course, it would be silly not to follow it. So although I really just wanted a new mic, well, we also can't ignore the lighting and then we can't ignore the fact that the office needed. And so you start to kind of get on this, well, we've gone this far. We've gone too far to turn back.

highlights the fact that even as someone who's very conscious about distraction, you know I talk about it often on the podcast, not getting distracted and you know keeping your eye on your objective. Ultimately it still happens to all of us and even though I talk about it, I'm conscious about it, and I actually knew it was happening as it was going. It wasn't kind of like a oh my goodness, I can't believe I did this. It really was a oh boy this wasn't the original plan. However,

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher (08:42.032)
evaluate how it fit into the rest of the plan. How did, you know, this additional time affect other things? And ultimately there's a few things that changed in the priorities to make it work, but it's important to remember what, you know, comes back to my favorite line, what is the objective? And as we make decisions for 2024, I want you to keep coming back to that. I want you to keep coming back to the what is the objective? Because when we keep the objective in mind,

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher (09:11.952)
decision. I actually had someone recently reach out and so you know a little bit of back history for some new our new listeners and a little update we're actually making some changes on our agency side and dividing. We're actually creating two companies out of what used to be one more on that in a future episode and so we have you know the marketing media services are going to one company and the bookkeeping services are going to another. Historically they

You know what? Although I have always pushed back on niching down and our niche is still quite wide, what starts to happen is it's actually hard to market such very such diverse services. So we've decided to split them up and on our marketing side, I often talk about the bookkeeping side, but on the marketing side we had someone reach out about SEO services recently and I went through the process of doing an audit on their website. We always offer a complimentary audit and made

that I, you know, gave some feedback on was the keywords, the titles of the pages, and the meta descriptions. And the receiving end really took that to mean that I was being very critical of their web designer. And, you know, got the web designer involved, that, you know, their work was being criticized, maybe it was incorrect. And so what we really had to come back to and discuss was that the objective of an SEO service and the objective of a web designer are actually two very

designer had fulfilled their scope of creating a website that had a beautiful brand presence that was on brand that conveyed the values and the services and all of these pieces which they had done very well they did not factor in SEO optimization and so you know I mentioned this because this is a very common misunderstanding and we have to remember who is working for what objective and so in this case the web designer is designing for the human eye for the

donors, SEO experts are ultimately designing for database, bot optimization, search optimization, which has nothing to do with aesthetic. So you have two different people and so you know it's very interesting because two different objectives and two and when we're working on the same site oftentimes those can misalign. The most optimized site sometimes isn't as beautiful and sometimes the most beautiful site is really not optimized and so we have to

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher (11:41.592)
is more important or decide if we're really comfortable with a middle ground option. And sometimes we say, hey, this is important to me. I really want to not include this on the homepage because I really don't like, I think it's very distracting to the brand. I do wanna include this information over on this page because that's really great for optimization for that specific keyword. And so, how does this tie together? How does the studio story, which is...

you know, it's a bit funny to start the year off with, you know, immediately really being a little bit what felt like behind and, you know, this SEO versus web designer story, how do these, how do these align? And it really comes back to keeping the objective in mind. And I have said it with so many guests, I've said it on so many episodes, ultimately keeping the objective in mind actually is so critical to every business decision. You know, upcoming episodes, we're going to talk to, you know, money.

experts, hiring experts, talent acquisition, operations, you know, all of these different pieces. And it always comes back to what is the objective? How does it tie? How does it relate to your business? How can we create the most success by, you know, however you manage success based on your objectives? And so sometimes we have a clash of objective in the case of the web designer and the SEO expert, or in the case of do we finish the studio that wasn't really in the plan?

Or do we hold off because in the end it did delay some other deadlines. The business owner has to, you know, the buck stops with the business owner. That end decision. There's no right or wrong answer on some of these things. You know, whether or not we have the new studio, whether we don't. Ultimately, does it prevent us from continuing? No. Does not doing it prevent us from leveling up the content, which was the plan? Yes. And so it's one of those pieces. We have to keep the objective in mind and we have to lay out the plan and the plan. You know, it's the very beginning of 2020.

for it. Now if you're listening to this episode a little later in the year, no problem, but what I want you to do is take a moment and really think about the end of the year. You know, fast forward to New Year's of 2024 and think about what is worth celebrating. What is, you know, the objective that would make you feel successful? Every person measures success in a different way. Every person has different objectives that support their life. Some people want to work, so

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher (14:09.444)
hours some people ultimately want to work less hours. You know their objective is to you know hit a certain revenue target within a certain number of hours and so you know could they make more? Yes, but would they have to work more? Yes, and that doesn't support their objectives. So we really have to lay out what is worth celebrating and the beginning of the year is always a perfect time, my objective, and what is worth celebrating and then build the

We don't have a business budget yet for 2024. Now is the perfect time to sit down and lay it out. Now we offer complimentary budgeting sessions for our clients that meet certain requirements. And so

You know, if you work with another bookkeeping provider or fractional CFO type service, now is a great time to ask if they offer these or perhaps if you have in-house bookkeeping, you could talk to your controller, whoever's in charge of your finances. Now is the time to sit down and look at the budget and lay out, you know, what resources do you require to hit your goal to celebrate that win? So often we see people set goals. I'm going to sell a million dollars this year, but they have no idea how many billable hours.

takes to hit that goal. How much profit based on the current profit margin they will make. So often businesses are more profitable when they're smaller than when they're bigger. You know it takes a lot of overhead as a business grows. Even you know in certain instances you know people say no I'll keep it tight. You know there are so many reasons why businesses become more expensive but just as an example the employer health tax in BC, British Columbia, and Canada

to businesses that have over $500,000 in wages every year. So you know there's a if you cross now that's where they've laid out the threshold if you've if you have crossed over $500,000 in wages then you're considered big enough to pay this tax. So immediately it costs you more to employ those people than if you only paid $490,000 in wages and so you know things like that are a perfect example. Lots of different states have different requirements you know sometimes

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher (16:22.428)
it's a certain number of employees, sometimes it's a certain amount of wages. You know, typically if you have a bigger team you require more people to manage them. If you have a bigger team you require more marketing in order to fill those. Now oftentimes more marketing requires different strategies, more management of the marketing, it's less basic. And so there's lots of different reasons why businesses become less nimble, less maneuverable as they get bigger. And so, you know, if the objective is more sales, that's great. But

Do we also know how that affects sustainability? Do we also know how does that affect the profit? Do we know how that affects the team? So, and when I talk about sustainability, sure, there is environmental sustainability, but when I refer to sustainability, I more commonly mean the sustainability of the business practices. Are we creating a business that is scalable? Are we creating a business that the business owner has to work 24 hours a day? You know, is the business owner, you know, doing the bookkeeping with one hand, answering client

doing the work. Things like that work in short spurts and as a business owner we all go through times where we have to just put our head down and get it done. Perhaps someone on the team is sick, maybe someone departed unexpectedly, maybe you landed a big job and you don't want to turn it down even though you're maybe not completely staffed for it. You know these are all reasons why as business owners we have to level it up and just get it done but we have to know that those are the techniques, those are the pieces, those are the level of hours

short spurts. Those are the sprints. We can't do the marathons of those because what ends up happening? Burnout, health is affected, sleep is affected, you know, other things, other parts of the business are affected, and so it doesn't support the end objective. Keeping the objective in mind is your biggest, most important piece for 2024. If we keep the objective in mind, decisions, left or right, yes or

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher (18:22.048)
time will support the objective in a better way. That's all for today.

I hope that you can truly lean into 2024, create massive impact, massive success. I hope that you choose the items on your list that you want to level up, that you want to dig into. Maybe it's a new studio, maybe it's additional content, maybe it's new services, new education, all of these types of things. Whatever it is, 2024 is the year to do it. Follow the show by going to any podcast app and searching SurfaceBase Business Society. Click subscribe.

Have a great week and we will see you soon.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher (21:36.022)
Well, we are all out of time for today. If you guys have not joined the Surface-Based Business Society Facebook community, make sure you head on over to Facebook and we can continue the conversation. Be sure to also follow the show by going to any podcast app and searching Surface-Based Business Society. Click Subscribe, click the fifth star, and leave us a written review. Have a great week, and we will see you soon.

Well, we are all out of time for today. If you guys have not joined the Service-Based Business Society Facebook community, make sure you head on over to Facebook and we can continue the conversation. Be sure to also follow the show by going to any podcast app and searching Service-Based Business Society. Click Subscribe, click the fifth star, and leave us a written review. Have a great week, and we will see you soon.

Well, we are all out of time for today. If you guys have not joined the Service-Based Business Society Facebook community, make sure you head on over to Facebook and we can continue the conversation. Be sure to also follow the show by going to any podcast app and searching Service-Based Business Society. Click Subscribe, click the fifth star, and leave us a written review. Have a great week, and we will see you soon.

Well, we are all out of time for today. If you guys have not joined the Service-Based Business Society Facebook community, make sure you head on over to Facebook and we can continue the conversation. Be sure to also follow the show by going to any podcast app and searching Service-Based Business Society. Click Subscribe, click the fifth star, and leave us a written review. Have a great week, and we will see you soon.

Well, we are all out of time for today. If you guys have not joined the Service-Based Business Society Facebook community, make sure you head on over to Facebook and we can continue the conversation. Be sure to also follow the show by going to any podcast app and searching Service-Based Business Society. Click Subscribe, click the fifth star, and leave us a written review. Have a great week, and we will see you soon.

Tiffany-Ann Bottcher (23:28.834)
Well, we are all out of time for today. If you guys have not joined the Service-Based Business Society Facebook community, make sure you head on over to Facebook and we can continue the conversation. Be sure to also follow the show by going to any podcast app and searching Service-Based Business Society.