Service Based Business Society Podcast

Season: 2
Episode: 14
Title: Watch that swing

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Hello, and welcome to the service based business society podcast. I'm your host, Tiffany-Ann-Bottcher, 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 provides tangible tips and techniques for scaling your business. Let's get started.

Welcome back to another episode, it's been a week off. So you may notice that this episode is actually being uploaded, uploaded a little late. And it's been a bit of a comedy of errors. And then we had a family incident, someone got injured. And you know, just some delays. So apologies. You know, I wanted to jump into this episode and talk a little bit about some initiatives that I have been putting in place in 2023 that I'm feeling so good about. And so I want to touch on that. I also want to touch on the concept of the pendulum swing and why you have to be so careful not to overcorrect. Because I've been seeing a lot of overcorrection. And you know, every time you implement something in your business, even if it's a 100%, the right thing to implement, it always creates a new challenge. You know, if you don't have enough leads, and you implement a new Google Ad strategy, while now you have more leads, chances are you're going to create a new challenge because you're going to stress test the next part of the process. And so you know, in the case of Google ads, they are, you know, random examples I'm giving here, now you're going to test the next part of the process.

So if your customer journey is to then book, you know, you want to book a console book a call, whatever that is, well, that you know, you add more leads will suddenly that part of the process is going to be tested. And then you know, when you solve that and make sure that it is all working just like it should realistically, you're going to be, you know, challenging the next part of the system. So always, always, always lots going on.
The concept of, you know, making sure your business is running like a well oiled machine is possible, the concept of perfection is not. And, you know, I understand that as you get to the point where you know, you're a little overwhelmed, things are starting to, you know, every time we've talked about the valley of death in previous episodes, but every time you were like really pushing it to the max, you're pushing new things, you're right ahead of that growth, it gets hard, and it gets uncomfortable, especially if you have either yourself or your teammates are pushing into new areas that they haven't before it, you know, when you push against that comfort zone, it can be challenging, but don't let that pull you away from the object. You know, you get up against that edge of that comfort zone and you're like, Oh, my goodness, this is really hard. I can't sustain this. I can't do this. I don't know if I can keep going. Maybe I should go back. No, you should not. You need to look at why you are uncomfortable. And you need to solve those issues. Because sometimes going back is not possible. Especially, you know, if you have built your business, if you have all of the infrastructure, people, the systems, everything built to be a $1 million a year company, for example. But you get to the 980,000 mark, and you're like holy crap, this is really hard. I better go back during the 700 a year was easier. You can go back to 700 a year. But guess what, you still have all those expenses and overhead like you're a million dollar a year business. And going back is suddenly not very fun, because you don't have the money to actually make it work. Suddenly you have a bank cash flow issue. So you know, that's a big one. And so we're going to talk a little bit about that today. And we're also going to talk about who the partners are in your business.

It's a big episode and it is super key, all incredibly valuable information. So you know, we're going to talk first off about some of these things I'm implementing in 2023. So if you follow me on social media In 2023, my word for the year is organization, whether that's in my business, whether that is in my personal life organization is the word. And so, you know, interestingly enough, we work with a number of professional organizers, through our agency, that is a niche we have kind of carved out in the world, and absolutely wonderful humans, their social media content all inspires me to be better, do better, be better. And, you know, I've learned so much about organization through working with professional organizers, you know, reading blog posts, writing blog posts, researching things, you know, all of these types of things. And so now, you know, I'm like, oh, I need to, I want to implement, I want to do some of these things. So I have been on an organizational mission, really, since about November, but it's all really starting to come into play. And the reason that I want to highlight it now is because I'm starting to feel the benefit of this organizational shift.

The first part of the organizational shift I did, and you know, this is not super business related, this is more life related. But you know, what, it's changing my life, which changes my business. So I'm here to share. And so one of the things that I did right away, and I mentioned this in our Facebook community a couple of times, but number one, a long time ago, I grabbed my kids Gmail email address, it's really hard to get just like when you're trying to create a business, and you're trying to find a domain that works with a business name you want, it's hard, because they're running out, you know, at the end of the day, there's only so many, and so people have to get more and more creative. So years ago, I actually grabbed my children's, you know, email, what would be an appropriate email address for them from Gmail, with their names versus, you know, when you get like the Fred Smith 7954369. You know, those are, we were trying to avoid that, anyways, every child has their own Gmail account, not that they're using them, but they now have the ability to use all of the Google features. Now, as much as I am an Apple device girl, I actually, I'm a Google Apps person at heart. So I recommend your Gmail, email for personal email. And I also have all of our work emails hosted by Google. So you're still able to use all of the Google functionality, if you want to know more about that, and what it means to host your email with Gmail, connect with me inside the Facebook group. But, so basically, we you know, we use these Gmail things. So what I also did as the next step was I was able to create each child their own Google Calendar, this is super essential, because what I was struggling with was my children would have things on my schedule, and I would have them on my calendar. And then as I was booking things out, my calendar would say, I was busy at times that I was not. My kids were busy or I would, you know, I tried to do like a family calendar versus a personal calendar. And either, you know, if my husband was driving the kids somewhere, or I was driving to get somewhere, the drive time was not accommodated. And so there were all of these factors to think about.

So first step, like I said, was to get everybody sorted out on their own calendars with their own Gmail accounts. And from there, I've been able to build out an entire system, organizational system, and including this absolutely wonderful 22 inch touch screen monitor in the kitchen that has this digital calendar. And everyone knows what is going on in their life where they need to be what they need to bring all these types of things. It has been a game changer, because I'm also allowing the children then, way more information, way more accountability, and they are more organized, they're ready for these things because they know they're coming. They can say, hey, I have an appointment on you know, tomorrow and yeah, like do it what do I need to have ready for that? Or, and so that has been huge. I've also basically upturned my entire house, which was, you know, moderately organized to start with, and have gotten like, super organized, even if there were bins organizational bins, I have now gotten Reagan through them to the point that even yesterday I went to the safety deposit box at the bank to inventory what was inside it because it was a bit of a mystery what was in there. And I wanted to make sure that I actually had all of this information. Why, why am I going through all these things? Why am I telling you this? Because it has been incredibly freeing, I feel different, I feel more in control and more organized. And my children feel more organized. And no one asked me what is for dinner because the screen tells them what's for dinner. And so that has all been an absolutely incredible major shift for 2023 and I'm going to continue on and I might talk about it periodically coming up. You know, just kind of an update because it has been a lot of work and I didn't really have the time to do it. But I also knew that he didn't have the time not to do it. So have you ever had that in your mind where you're like oh my gosh, I need to do this but I don't have time to do it but I can't really proceed without doing it. But I absolutely don't have the time. Sometimes it's breaking it down into small tasks when it comes to emptying out and organizing everything. You know number one if you are able, hire a professional organizer. After working with them, you know, for so long and seeing the work that they have done through our agency, I work with these organizers. So I see, you know, before and after photos, I see the client testimonials and stuff. I mean, if that is an option for you, I didn't have anyone I felt super comfortable with yet because none of the organizers I work with are in our area. And so you know, if that is an option for you, do it, look into it. But if it's not, you know, I have gone through every cupboard, turned it upside down, taking stuff out, so much donations, handing things down to, you know, handing me downs to other kids, like it's been a whole, it's been a whole thing. So 2023, the word is organization. So we've got the calendar, we I've added in these chore lists for the kids that come up on this touchscreen, so that when they get home from school, I don't have to be like, oh, did you remember to you know, XYZ, now they know lunch, kids need to go to the same backpacks need to be hung up, you know, like, need to have this prepared for such and such or so when I can add all of those from my phone as I think about them, because that's the other thing. Sometimes you think about things, but you're not in the right place to write them down. So that has been a game changer. So far this year, I'm feeling better, feeling better. And when you have a freer, cleaner mind, you can do more things. You can take on more challenges.

So anyway, moving on from this family organizational piece, it has been such a part of what I've been doing, I just had to share. But you know, we're talking a little bit about the pendulum swing in businesses and the partners you need to be working with. And so when it comes to that pendulum swing, and you know, any kind of radical movement is a great example of the pendulum swing, you know, people don't like one thing, they don't like something and they say that the correction swings so far. The other way reminds me of one, you know, years ago, playing video games and trying to drive like the race cars on the screen, you know, you're like playing, you got your controller, and you're trying to steer and hit the gas. And I would go and I would like hit the right side of the wall. And then you would like course correct. And then you'd like bounce off the left side of the wall? And then you would course correct and hit the right side of it be like oh my gosh, I just want to drive down the middle of the road. Why is this so hard? That is the same in business. It's this like bouncing mentality where something goes wrong, you know, maybe maybe you didn't have the appropriate contracts in place. Maybe you didn't have the appropriate onboarding steps, maybe you, you know, we're all of a sudden, super busy. And so you went on a hiring spree and you just needed more people and more people, a lot of times those major decisions to swing and you know, swing the pendulum to correction. Oftentimes, the correction is too much the other way. And so it's super, you know, how do we know, how do we determine how much correction? Well, we need to keep that objective in mind. I know I say almost every week, but keeping that objective in mind is so essential to deciding how much correction is required. And remembering that one, you know, if something goes wrong, one time determining how much correction needs to be implemented based on that one thing, because if this is a habitual problem, you know, if you're realizing hey, like over and over again, this is a problem, well, then you definitely need to implement a solution. But if some random things happen, and you're like, the chance of this ever happening, again, is highly unlikely, but I want to learn from my mistakes, I do not want this ever to happen again, you know, it becomes this, okay, well, but let's be before we start investing time, energy, resources, training, whatever it is, into the situation, let's make sure that we actually have something that needs or requires that large of an adjustment.

So for example, you know, you spend a lot of time in marketing, we decide, hey, we need, you know, we need to go and we need to do more social media. And all of a sudden, it's like social media has taken over everything. All we have time for is to create social media content. But how many customers? Are we getting from social media? Is this in line with the objective, you know, sometimes we have HR Human Resources issues. And so you know, someone makes a mistake, and we need to let them go. And then we realize, Oh, my goodness, we don't need a person like that at all forgetting completely about all of the positive qualities that person has. But we're going and we're going different, we're hiring someone very, very different. And then we hire someone and we haven't fully evaluated that new version of different and so the pendulum has swung and now we have an entirely new set of strengths and challenges all about minor course corrections, not major every so often your business needs major adjustments, but not as often as they're being implemented. Minor adjustments. It's like a little more left, a little more left. That's about good. Oh, maybe a touch more left, not like oh my goodness, we did a U turn. Those U turns need to be saved for when they are really required because they completely disrupt the flow of your business. I was on a consult this week. It was a first time Strategy Session consult type while we were talking about momentum time because this particular business owner was really feeling pulled in a number of directions. And I often think about, you know, if you are the peanut butter and your business is the bread, you can spread that peanut butter pretty thin. But at one point, when you just keep on a bigger and bigger piece of bread at one point, none of the bread is very good, because it, it barely has any peanut butter on it more peanut butter on less bread before spread it but don't spread it so far that it becomes so thin that you can't even taste the peanut butter, you know, you really need to be cognizant of how you're spreading this. So she was saying, you know, through get one thing going, and then she will basically switch gears to something else. But now her lack of focus on the first thing that was now falling off. And so I was saying you know this, it's like a wagon with a flat side on one wheel where you need to get the wagon rolling. And if you get it really rolling, you'll kind of skim over the flat side on the wheel. And you just got to keep it going. But every time you completely stop, you stop pushing the wagon, go do something else. Now the wagon is back sitting on its flat side, and you have to get going again. And you have to get pushing through that flat side. And it's bumpy every single time.
So you have to develop a strategy that allows you to keep pushing the wagon, keep the momentum going, but also keep going on all of the things you can't take on so much that the wagon keeps stopping. Because every time it stops going through that whole bumpy process all over again, it reminds me. You know, at one point, I did a lot of hot yoga. And the first few classes of hot yoga are always I always think, why am I paying for this? Oh my god, I wanted to do this, why did I want to do this? Again, I remember how much I didn't like this. But if you keep going, it becomes something that you truly enjoy and look forward to. But if you only go for two classes, you never get to the good part. And so what was happening in her business was the equivalent of two classes and two classes and giving him and two classes. And so instead we gave that wagon a good push and then kept it going suddenly, it all started to just smooth out. You know, when we're making these adjustments in our business, you know, we need to keep the objective in line. And we need to do things that are sustainable things that keep the wagon moving. And you know, if you have a collection of wagons and you're running around, alternating between keep pushing this one, okay, now push the other one. Okay, now run to the next one, push that one back to that's what it starts to feel frantic, hectic, disorganized, like your mismatch like things get dropped, miss, you got things falling off your wagon, and you don't even know it. And so that can be a challenge.

But here's the thing, here's the real honest truth, every business goes through it. Because that wagon of the wagon, when you have that collection of wagons, that's your valley of death. That's that feeling just before you hit that next stride where it you're like, I don't know if I can do this, but you keep going and you keep the consistency and you keep pressing on. And you keep the wagon rolling, and it all starts to smooth out. And then you're like, oh, okay, I can do this, I can do this. And then you're like, Oh, I think I'd like to grow a little more. And so and then the process starts again. But you know, it leads us into the discussion of who are these partners in your business that are super essential.

You know, one of the things I commonly see is people holding on to people in their business that they have actually 100% outgrown. And those people are making things more challenging. So when you're in a high growth business, when your processes are evolving, because your business is growing, and they have to when you are going all in on development and learning and growing and you've got, you know, team members around you, they're doing the same people who do not grow at the same rate as your business will eventually be outgrown. And so you know, in their current roles, it's not to say that those people can't learn new skills. It's not to say that, you know, the right role can't be found. But typically, especially in management roles, or supportive roles. If you have someone who is like your right hand and your business and your business keeps growing and growing and growing and that person is not growing at one point you will be doing extra you will be stretched like challenged in new ways, because your right hand is no longer carrying the same proportion. They're no longer assisting in the same way.

It's important to ensure that as you're going through your strategy as you're looking and planning that you're making sure that the right people are in the right roles and that you are foreshadowing what capacity people have so that you can be bringing in the right people you can be training and developing the people that you need to continue growing so that you can stay in the lane that you need to be in. You know, when you are down in the weeds of your business. You are not up looking at the strategy driving the direction making the changes, you know, really leading. And so it's important to choose and ensure the right people. So you know, whether it's your support team making sure that they are adequately trained and, and you know, sometimes it's, it's really about just continuing to invest in training and development and whatnot, you need to do your part and the team member needs to do their part. And then you know, the business continues to grow. It's those that get stale, that are no longer growing and developing. And that is where you run into challenges.

So you know, but aside from those support staff and, and team members and whatnot, you need to be looking and foreshadowing what management requirements you're going to have. Because you need to be able to continue to grow with your business shift into that CEO role, you also need to make sure that you have the appropriate accountant is a big one, they should be proactively looking at what you're doing, looking for and doing tax planning, making sure you're covered, making sure these things are going out. So accountant super key. The other role that is super key is your bank, you know, multiple times in the last run into some issues where banking providers are not stepping up to the plate, they are not fulfilling, you know, you may have come on to the bank with very little planning, you had a business idea, you're like, oh, I need a bank account. So you went to a bank, you opened a business bank account, and that was that. But now as your business starts to grow, you know, if you're in that million dollar a year mark, that business banking provider now needs to be working with you to plan for things like you know, what account structure do you mean? What credit options do you need? Do you have business credit cards, what kind of options do those come with? Do you have an operating line of credit as your business grows, you will get to the point where you need your banker to rise to be Cajun be offering, again, proactive solutions to say, Hey, this is what you need.

This is what's been happening a couple of times in the last six weeks, or you know, when businesses grow the business has not run out of cash are the ones that grow the fastest. Because, you know, if you think about carrying costs, so if you have your team working there on site for a couple of weeks, you've now paid those people. So you've paid for all of the supplies, you've paid for the team, you've paid all of your overhead expenses. And now that job carries on for a couple of weeks. And by the time you get to the invoice invoice processing time, you may be carrying those expenses, you have paid all of them out for a month before the money's coming back into the account. And so it's important, you know, when you start to look at your cash flow, depending on your jobs now, if you have zero processing time, if you know, do the job, get paid that day, do the job get paid that day, that's very different. But if you have any kind of business, that is as a longer term project where you're invoicing at the end, you need to be looking at the timelines between when you're paying things out and when you're being paid. Because during that time, well, which money are you using? And typically, that comes down to a like operating line of credit. A lot of business owners shy away from that, oh, no, no, I don't want any debt in my business, well, you're not gonna really grow without it, because you need the operating cash flow, to cover the expenses so that you can, I'm sure if you've been in business for a long time. And I mean, we don't want to dive too deeply into accounting and, and how it works and how we, you know, over long term, you can create more cash flow. But you know, as we're, you know, we're primarily talking about, you know, high growth businesses. And so you have these expenses you've paid out, you are waiting for this cash to come in, while you're operating line of credit is what covers you in the short term.

So making sure that when you have these things coming up, because the worst time to be applying for those kinds of things is when you're out of cash. So you want to be foreshadowing, again, looking and saying, Okay, so I've got these big projects coming out, I need to see it and construction companies all the time, because they often are paying out massive material costs and labor costs and not getting paid right away. And so businesses often go under, not because they don't have the work, but because they can no longer afford to carry the expenses. And so you know, working with your bank to plan for the things you're going to need.

You also want a trusted adviser, you want a mentor that can help guide you and keep you oftentimes, you know, when we're in it, it's hard to see you know, the the expression, you can't see the forest through the trees, you want someone that can help remind you, hey, does this support the objective? Because it's often you know, you get pulled down a rabbit hole, especially if you're that new in that transition between, you know, working in the business to leading the business working on the business where it's easy to get pulled into nuts and bolts types problems. And so you know, having that mentor that you can mount those ideas off of discuss challenges work through things is also incredibly it's fundamental in the growth of your business to have someone to discuss things with Now sometimes that comes from networking groups, you'll, you'll connect with other entrepreneurs, sometimes, you know, whether that's in your industry or not can be, you know, it really depends on what type of advice you're looking for we I always recommend having some form of business mentor that understands your objective, and it's just helping provide guidance on things that come up, because they do every day in business, they come up.

So you know, to prevent that pendulum from swinging too far the other way, especially if it's something that is emotion based, you know, you often see something go wrong in a business that a business owner takes very personally, I mean, your blood, sweat, and tears are in this business. Now something has not gone quite right. And you're like, oh, man, I don't ever want that to happen again. And now the pendulum is swinging the other way. Sometimes that mentor can come in and say, Hey, like, hold the phone for one, just one second. Let's really break this down. And let's look at the facts. How does this support the objective? Do we need to course correct this much? Are we making decisions based on emotion, an analytical mindset? And so these are all super key.

So you know, we've got our accountant, we've got our banker, we've got some form of business mentor, whether that's a coach, consultant, a mentor, you know, there's so many different descriptions, varieties, you know, and we talked last week about ensuring that that person, you know, that the information that you're pulling from is from a quality source that has, you know, vetted results, you know, because it's the information overload era, if you did not, you know, listen to that episode, you can go back to last week is a great episode about, you know, just that and choosing who you're listening to, and the quality of the information because oftentimes, you get this, you know, multiple sources of information, and they can be different. So, you know, super key and when we combine that all together, so, you know, we've touched a little bit on life organization, it's a, it's a mindset piece, I am on my own organizational journey, in 2023, I would like to say I was fairly organized to begin with, I was not fairly organized, I was not disordered. And then, you know, we've got this ensuring when we're making changes, that the pendulum is not swinging too far the other way that you know, we are not bouncing from the right wall to the left wall to the right wall to the left wall, that we are getting into the middle of that lane and really accelerating in the direction we want to go.

Choosing the right partners in our business and not when I say partners, I'm not talking about you know, like your business partner that owns 50%. I'm talking about the partners in your success being your accountant, your banker, and your business mentor.

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 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