by Karen Skidmore | 07,22 | Business Planning, Team & Hiring
There are lots of ways of how to take your business to the next level, but having been working as a business coach for more than 15 years, there’s no doubt that the general theme to most business growth strategies and tactics is ‘how to have more’.
This is why I changed tact in my own business about six years ago. So much of my focus was around marketing and product development; teaching how to build email lists, create one to many programmes and plan out marketing campaigns. Over time, I began to realise that, although what I was teaching was good and was getting results for my clients, there was a lot of effort and energy in having to ‘feed the machine’.
As soon as one marketing campaign was over, it was time to start the next one. Then the next one. And then the next one.
When you are young (and yes, I mean in your 20s and 30s!), you have the energy for this. Your body forgives a week of back-to-back late nights with extra cups of strong coffee. You thrive off the busy weeks and love the thrill of creating the next new thing that you want to sell.
But in your 40s and 50s … well, I don’t know about you but the midlife shifts and extra family responsibilities (children and/or eldercare) mean that your mind, body and soul wants to slow down. No matter how exciting or fun your work is, it’s harder to keep up and too much adrenaline and cortisol starts to show up as fatigue, brain fog or one of the many other peri-menopausal symptoms many women can experience, especially when living a full and busy life.
This was me. And I realised that many of my clients were experiencing this too.
What I was teaching and coaching my clients wasn’t sustainable.
Flip to today, and I now run a business coaching and training company that focuses on sustainable growth strategies. Yes, we still work with our clients on marketing strategies and how to get clients, but the emphasis is on playing the long game and planning, and then deciding on which growth strategies apply to get them the best results.
And no matter what those strategies are, there are three simple rules that I now always apply; are they trackable, repeatable, delegatable.
Let me go through each one in turn.
Is it trackable?
When you first start out, you have no idea really what is going to work. But over the months and the years, you get data on what does work. A huge problem though is very few business owners track this data; they keep it all in their heads (or worse, they only focus on social numbers such as social reach and engagement) which means the decisions they make are based on emotion (or in the case of social numbers, ego).
Some examples of basic data you want to track are:
- Number of leads you get each week/month
- Number of conversations you have each month
- Number of sales you make each week/month
- Number of new customers each week/month
- Average spend in first 90 days
- Average lifetime spend
Knowing this kind of data means that you can begin to make decisions commercially, as well as emotively (we need both … data only gives one part of the picture, yes?). So in everything you do, in particular with regards to your marketing, ask yourself ‘Is this trackable?’
Is it repeatable?
Once a business is up and running, the things that you do each week are often on repeat. The way you reply to emails, write and send proposals, market and run events, deliver your programmes or work on client projects. Again, the problem is that the business owner is often too busy to take the time out to see this, and then be able to do something about it.
How many times have you searched your outbox for an email you sent to a prospect that you wanted to use to send to someone else?
How many hours have you spent formatting a proposal or client acceptance letter from scratch, and found yourself typing the same words over and over?
It’s the same with marketing campaigns; why create something new when you can use what you did last time and adapt it to your new offer?
The energy used to start everything from scratch is exhausting (or worse, searching folders for a document you know you’ve saved somewhere!) so there has to be a time in your business when you start to switch your thinking. If you ask yourself ‘is this repeatable?’, you’ve got the beginnings of a process that needs writing out and seeing what templates, checklists or repeat actions can be created.
When you follow a process, you can then use that precious brain power for working on the bigger vision for what you want.
Is it delegatable?
Which takes me nicely into the third rule; delegatable. If you are busy delivering work for your clients, there’s often not much time left in your week to be thinking and creating these repeatable processes. Which is why setting the delegate rule is instrumental to your success long term.
To begin with, you may not have anyone you can delegate these repeatable tasks and processes to. If this is the case, start by making a list of what comes up over the course of a week, and you will have written the first draft of your job brief. You can’t grow a business without help, so it’s critical that this rule comes into play if you don’t want to burn out in the process.
These three rules are simple questions to start asking yourself from today. Why not write them on a post-it note and stick it on your computer screen; this can help remind yourself to ask these questions as you go about your day.
Of course, this isn’t a quick-fix, especially if you are working flat out, but these three simple rules and questions will begin to change your thinking as a business owner, and ultimately engage your CEO Mindset, and start to steer you along a path of sustainable growth.
If you want to discuss how you can put these rules into your business and begin growing sustainably, then let’s talk. Book a call with one of our Grow Strong business coaches. There’s never any charge for our first call together. Click here to check out times available.
Until next time, do less, be more, play bigger.
by Karen Skidmore | 06,22 | Leadership, Stories, inspirations & thoughts for the day
Having people around you who support what you do is important; it can be a very lonely job running your own business. Being able to pick up the phone, meet up for a walk or coffee and talk about what’s been going on in your week with someone you trust and feel comfortable around is important.
But how many of these people are too safe?
Over the many years of running my own coaching and training businesses, I have hung out with all kinds of people. I started networking as soon as I began my first coaching business in 2004. It was before the days of LinkedIn and Facebook so the only way to meet people was to be in the room with them.
But so many of the events were stiff and formal affairs, either full of grey suited men or ladies who lunched. It didn’t take me long to start up my own women’s networking group, which over the years grew to encompass four locations, attracting 25+ ladies at each event.
However, over the years I began to see how much I was playing it safe.
It was good to be the leader of my own events, but there was a pattern of sticking to networks that I felt safe and comfortable. And this, of course, led to me having lots of safe and comfortable business buddies.
I started to fall out of love with networking because every event I went to seemed to attract the same people who talked a good game, and looked the part, but appeared to be so busy networking that they were morphing into each other, saying the same things, and often moaning about the same things!
At the same time, I had taken up playing tennis. Not competitively, but taking part in weekly classes with other mums at school. I loved it and soon realised that I always played better when I played against stronger players. Yes, I still made plenty of mistakes and smashed the ball up and over the fences (erratic was probably how I described my game!) … but the good shots I did play were brilliant. I may never have won any tournaments, but my game play improved significantly each time I was against a better player.
And I see the same with the people we choose to play with in business.
Networking now, of course, is very much a hybrid affair. The choices we have are endless but this has opened up huge opportunities to find yourself in safer, virtual events; sitting in a zoom room where it may be full of lovely people, but if you take a step back and get really honest about yourself, you are playing down and probably the “smartest person in the room”.
Choosing safe, comfortable places to meet safe, comfortable people in the early stages of your business can be the right thing to do to help build your confidence. Like my tennis, if I went straight to the school mum’s tournament without any lessons, I would have been smashed all over the place and not even have had the chance to return a ball.
Frustrating for the others on the court … downright embarrassing for me! I am not sure I would have gone back for more and probably told myself there was no point taking lessons because tennis was obviously not my game. So safe, comfortable at the start is critically important to allow you to build your confidence.
But over time, it’s very easy to stay in those safe, comfortable places with those safe, comfortable people, particularly as we begin to get more confident in getting ‘back in the room’ and start to want to attend workshops, conferences and retreats.
And when you see it, which I hope reading this has given you that lens, you realise the people who were instrumental to helping you through the last few years, aren’t the ones to take forward and beyond.
This isn’t being egotistical … this is thinking strategically and having a CEO Mindset.
One of my favourite quotes that I used to have up on my wall in my first few years of business, is from Jim Rohn …
You become the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
If that average is of the safe, comfortable people you are still hanging out with and discussing your business with, can you see that it may be time to go find some different people … some ‘unsafe’ people who can raise your game because they are stronger players.
And this also applies the same to your trusted friends or family members. Talking through your next big idea for your business with your spouse can often be the worst thing you can do; they love you, they want you to succeed but they also want to protect you and keep you safe.
Again, with friends who you’ve been through ‘thick and thin’; they love you, they want you to succeed but they also want to protect you and keep you safe.
Of course, I am not suggesting you keep important changes to your business a secret from your loved ones … but choose when and how you tell them, remembering you have a choice of what response or advice you want from them. If you aren’t confident with the idea that you’ve got or have a roadmap in which to execute it, talking it through with someone who wants to keep you safe can extinguish your flame very quickly, pulling you back down to safer, more comfortable levels.
I work with so many midlifers who either can’t or don’t want to pull back on their aspirations, and seeing this safety net can hugely open them up to taking the right risks and being able play a bigger, stronger game.
Where are your ‘unsafe’ people who are going to stretch you onto the next phase of your business?
What networking groups or business buddy circles do you may need to move on from?
You don’t have to say goodbye and never speak to these people again … but actively choosing those five people you want to become the average of is critical if you want to scale and grow your business.
If you want to discuss how you can release yourself from your safety net, then let’s talk. Book a Next Level Business Strategy Session with me. There’s never any charge for our first call together.
Looking for your next step to take?
Let’s talk through your current product offerings and I can help you see where you could be running your business smarter – book a Next Level Business Strategy Session with me. There’s never any charge for our first call together. Click here to check out times available.
Until next time, do less, be more, play bigger.
by Karen Skidmore | 06,22 | Business Planning, Marketing Articles
There’s plenty to think through when deciding if your new product idea is going to be worth investing your time, energy and money in. Is it something that your clients *really* want? What price should you charge? How do you go about marketing it?
But there’s one question that gets forgotten … what job is this product going to have in your business?
Let me explain with a story from one of my clients last year. She had been running her marketing consultancy for some years, and although it was going OK, she was struggling to expand it and increase her revenue. No matter what she did, her business didn’t shift.
Then she was given the idea of creating a membership product. What’s not to love about a membership product? Regular, consistent income … a perfect passive income! She threw herself into developing the idea; went on a course, learnt all there was to know about setting up and running a membership product and launched it.
When we started working together, she had been running it for around six months. It became very clear that she was spending 80% of her time with the clients that were generating 20% of her income. Her membership product, although packed full of value, was running her ragged.
She told me the reason she wanted to create this product was because she wanted something to offer the people who couldn’t afford her consultancy fees.
At first glance, this may seem to be reasonable … why leave money on the table?
But her bigger vision was to scale up her consultancy business so she could outsource much of the delivery, and free up her time to start up a new business. What this membership product had done was to make her busier than ever, working more with the clients who weren’t going to help achieve her ambitions.
She’d created a down-sell product for people who realistically were never going to be worth more than a few hundred pounds a year, and yet ended up taking up most of her time and expertise.
In a very short period of time, she had closed down her membership product, which immediately freed up her time to focus on the right projects to move her towards her bigger vision, and four months later she had launched her new business alongside her current consultancy.
Of course, this isn’t about whether a membership product is a good idea or not. There are plenty of businesses who thrive having a membership product, serving hundreds of people every year, often as an up-sell or prospect product to their existing programmes and services.
The point is whether the job of your new product idea is going to help you achieve your bigger vision.
In the case of my client, it made strategic sense to NOT create a down-sell offer for the people who couldn’t afford her – because let’s be honest … it’s going to take a very long time before any of those people are going to be in a place to afford her consultancy fees (there are plenty of more effective and less time intensive ways of staying engaged with them if that’s what you want to do) – and instead focus her time and energy on what’s going to free up her time to allow her launch her new business.
So when you are pondering on your next new product or service idea, ask these three questions before your creative surge takes you too far down the launch path.
1. What is the job of the product?
Is it to give an easy, low risk way of acquiring new clients … will it be your core offering that you focus most of your time on … or to add value to your clients and increase their average spend … or is it a way of extending your client lifetime spend?
Know exactly what you want this new product to do for you and your business and keep this clear in your head as you set about the creation and launch process to ensure you don’t go off track.
2. Will it help you achieve your financial goals?
No matter how brilliant an idea it is, will it move you towards what you really want out of life and business … will it really increase your revenue and by when … or spread you too thin across too many products?
Set clear financial goals and quantify your expectations because there’s every chance you will also see you’ll need far less leads and sales to make this a success, especially in the early stages.
3. How can this product idea scale your expertise without you?
It may be that you are still very much your business, but if your ambition is to grow and scale, it’s never too early to start asking questions such as how much of your time is needed to create and deliver this product … what resources could help speed up the process and make it easier … and who can you ask for help?
One of the biggest shifts you can make to move from being a busy freelancer to having a profitable, scalable business is to change your questions from ‘How do I?” to what and who questions … it shifts you to not just being a business owner, but to being a CEO and opening up your growth potential.
For most people I speak to about growing a business, coming up with new ideas is never a problem. And it’s very easy to get caught up in all the fun, creative stuff in those early stages of a new idea. So before you get too far down the process of creating and launching a new product or programme, stop and think about it strategically.
It will save you months, if not years, of stress, worry and frustration.
Looking for your next step to take?
Let’s talk through your current product offerings and I can help you see where you could be running your business smarter – book a Next Level Business Strategy Session with me. There’s never any charge for our first call together. Click here to check out times available.
Until next time, do less, be more, play bigger.
by Karen Skidmore | 06,22 | Leadership, Midlife & Menopause
We have the habit of overestimating the life shit that comes our way.
And underestimating the power and influence we believe we already have.
This was the hard truth that I was told yesterday by one of the world’s leading experts on mindset and women’s leadership.
As Ambassador for The Hunger Project and leader of the Unleashed Women movement here in the UK, I had the honour of interviewing Cathy Burke, who has a 20+ year history with the charity, previously Country Director of Australia and then Global VP, and now Global Ambassador.
Along with asking her about her work with The Hunger Project, I also wanted to know her thoughts on why so many midlife women drop out of leadership and professional careers. With everything I do, my overriding mission is for the empowerment of women to ensure more women in their 50’s, 60’s and beyond are in positions of power to influence our economic, political and social infrastructures and outcomes.
So I asked for her thoughts on the matter.
There was much she shared on this, which I will share more about in the future, but what hit me hardest was this truth (and yes, this her truth … not THE truth) that many women have a habit of overestimating the shit and problems that we have to deal with, whilst at the same time underestimating how much power and influence we already have.
Wow! Is it really possible that we make too much of the things that drag us out of positions of power, leadership and influence?
I get the second part about not believing in the power that we already have within us to step up and make the difference. How many times have we felt lonely, forgotten, ignored, belittled by what someone has said to us or pulled back because we felt others were so much better than us? I know I have.
But to be told that I may be over-egging my life shit stuff?
Now I know this will be triggering to so many of us – me included! I have had to deal with a growing family, a chronic health crisis in my 40’s and in more recent years, eldercare responsibilities.
Have I really made too much of this over the years?
But as I reflected, I saw that this is not about the actual shit we have to deal with that’s important here, because yes there are so pretty BIG shitty things that happen in life. It’s the how, when and where we choose to focus our time, energy and attention moving through them. Or as Jo Blackwell, Founder of The Midlife Movement, commented on my piece on this on LinkedIn yesterday … it’s the “times when you overestimated the emotional energy needed to deal with it.”
Because yes, I am a white, privileged female who is well aware of all the amazing support and access to resources she has in her life. And when put into context of what so many others have to contend with, and our huge global problems, I can see that yes, I have absolutely overestimated the amount of emotion and energy I needed to deal with life shit at times.
This plays out as having way too many hours of worry, and sometimes sleepless nights on things that aren’t so bad when put in the context of what’s happening in the world. These times have not only taken my attention away from projects that needed with my time, attention and leadership, but also sucked me dry, often leading me to further health complications and my burn out symptoms returning, and left me with little for anything else, let alone my desire to make a difference in this world.
I don’t write this as a preach, or even pretend that a lot of life shit is not really shit, but I do wonder if you recognise times when you overestimated the emotional energy needed to deal with life shit.
And yes, there is the caveat that there are times that we absolutely need to take time out, to rest and recover and be with the people – or even ourselves – at certain times in our lives. But … and this is a BIG BUT … if there is a burning desire in you to step up, to up level your business and your leadership, or to contribute to something far bigger than you, then this overestimating habit can no doubt pull us back from our potential to make a bigger difference.
I’d love to know what you think. Leave a comment below with your perspective on this and what this throws up for you.
Until next time, do less, be more, play bigger.
by Karen Skidmore | 05,22 | Business Planning, Leadership
Being able to make good decisions is one of the keys to adopting a CEO mindset and growing a successful business.
But decision fatigue is real; the more decisions you have to make each day, your ability to make decisions becomes worse.
We’re faced with thousands of them every day, from the mundane (What to cook for dinner?) to the business-changing (Can I trust this person?). And for most of us right now, we are still reeling from the past two years of making decisions about stuff we never had to think about before (Which way do I walk through this supermarket? Do I have to wear a mask? Is it OK to hug this person?).
I always prided myself on being able to make quick decisions. Even at the start of my career, I realised I was able to process information fast and see where the real problem was.
But as I got older, my brain got faster as I took on more and my expectations of myself climbed, and the decisions I was making became more knee-jerk and reactive as I jumped from one task to the next.
I simply couldn’t keep up with what life and business was throwing at me so when I hit my 40’s, exasperated by peri-menopausal symptoms of brain fog and exhaustion, I found that I didn’t trust myself to make good decisions any more. And this had a direct impact on my business.
Procrastination not only slows down growth … it’s exhausting!
To be able to get better at making good decisions, it’s important for us to learn how to first trust ourselves, our own judgement and instincts.
The first step in trusting yourself is knowing that you don’t have to be good at everything, all the time.
I get that we have incredibly high expectations of ourselves, largely because of our society’s expectations (You can have it all; be a perfect mother AND run a successful business), but also because of experiences we had growing up both at home and at school. But let’s be real: nobody is perfect. Nobody ever will be.
No matter how much we try to make ourselves into some sort of superhuman machine, everyone drops a ball or makes a mistake from time to time. And that’s okay! It doesn’t mean we’re horrible people or should feel ashamed about ourselves; it just means that being human means not being perfect all the time.
So giving yourself a break and being kinder to yourself, particularly on the days you feel more tired than usual or you’re juggling family needs, is critical to allowing yourself the time to step back and give yourself some breathing space.
Trusting your gut is something you have to work at.
The older we get and the more responsibilities we take on, the busier our heads get and the longer our to-do-lists grow. When your head starts controlling your life, it’s easy for it to override any intuition or instincts you may have. And when you get so busy that you forget to give yourself the space to hear the advice from inside of you, that connection can get cut off.
It’s the same as working out and keeping fit; if you stop, your body loses the muscle definition you gained, and your fitness levels go down.
The next time you are faced with a decision, instead of panicking or saying “I don’t know” – take a moment , close your eyes and listen closely inside yourself first. If you really don’t know how to do this (and yes, ten years ago I was so ‘in my head’ that I really didn’t know how to hear what my instinct was telling me!), then take note of my next point.
Spend more time in your body.
Many of us will exercise for the sake of fitness and health, measuring success by steps or sweat. But because so much business is often solved in our heads, these kinds of exercises can feed the brain; giving you more things to take action on and complete.
Spending time moving your body consciously can really help you connect with the neural pathways that run around your body. Movement such as dance – prancing around the kitchen rather than following a structured class – and slower walking focused on your posture – noticing how your feet connect with the ground with each step – can be simple ways of sensing your body and spending time ‘out of your head’.
Recognise that fear is different from intuition
… and sometimes it can be good to take the moment to ask the fear what it may be trying to tell you. Is there anything that you can put in place to make your next steps less risky for you? Perhaps you need more time to put your decision into action … maybe you need to hire some help?
If you choose to ignore your fears, you may find that you procrastinate and pull yourself back from taking action. So use your fear to shine a light on anything that you may avoid simply because it feels uncomfortable as this can be helpful in making sure you don’t avoid taking action on your decisions.
Be prepared for change, even if it means sacrificing some things you really care about.
Trusting yourself means putting your faith in your ability to make good choices and decisions. It means taking risks without being afraid of the consequences.
If you really want to take your business up a level, then there is every chance you are going to have to stop doing some of the things you are doing right now – and yes, that includes certain clients, programmes and team members you may really care about – and do something different.
This may mean that you stop offering a particular service, programme or product; it may mean you have to change your pricing structure; it may mean you have to fire one of your team members.
You can not grow a business without change. Get comfortable with that concept because trusting yourself means knowing when to let go and when to hold on.
You must trust yourself even when the outcome seems uncertain and you may not know all the answers.
One podcast I’ve got into recently is The Diary of a CEO. I was particularly taken by one of his more recent ones – Moment 54: How you should make every big decision with guest Rochelle Humes.
They reference a conversation he had with Barack Obama and his 51% decision making rule. Steven says “It comes down to if we are always looking for 100% of the facts, data and certainty to get our decisions over the line, it leads to huge procrastination and time-wasting. Getting to that 51% is a much more efficient system, and it reassures us that it will be the right decision to make.”
Knowing that we can make another decision or even reverse it if needed can open us up to bigger thinking and bolder decision making … and that the cost of procrastinating and trying to be more than 51% in favour for, or against of that decision is potentially huge.
I like this idea of having your logic brain to be only 51% convinced … it opens up to trusting our intuition more.
Next week, I want to dive into the importance of slowing down, and how going slow can actually speed up your progress. So for now, comment below and let me know what resonates with you here.
Until next time, do less, be more, play bigger.
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