The Balanced Business Leaders Podcast

VIDEO RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/Jklc0uK4H6A

RELATED LINKS:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders

https://linktr.ee/liminalclarity

https://www.liminalclarity.com/podcasts/

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone, welcome to the Balanced Business Leaders Podcast hosted by yours truly, Claire Jones, owner of Liminal Clarity. We are a business development agency that helps small business leaders scale and grow without burning out.

This is the last podcast in a series where we have been discussing the various trials and tribulations that lead me to creating my Three Pillars of Business Success, a framework that represents the foundational systems that contribute to sustainable business growth.

If you’re interested in learning more, please join us in our free Balanced Business Leaders Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders.

Ready? Alright, let’s dive in.

[musical intro]

So I started this podcast as a way to tell my story, particularly when it comes to the many, many different lessons that I have learned over the years when it comes to founding, developing, running, and growing small businesses.

This particular episode is about the fifth step to creating effective Processes & Systems for your business - Operations Manuals. These are important because you need to clearly document your company’s philosophies, expectations, policies, and guidelines.

We started the Processes & Systems pillar with Business Plans, so that you can strategically set up your business for success. Here, we talked about creating a blueprint that will provide you with a solid plan for the management and growth of your business.

Then, that led us to Financial Processes. Here, we talked about setting up the backend systems that will help you track your business’s finances so that you are not surprised by unexpected tax bills or being short on cash at the end of the month.

Then, we detailed the Client Journey which included onboarding, project management, and offboarding processes so that your clients and customers feel a sense of clarity and certainty by setting external expectations that thoughtfully guide them throughout their time with you.

On the internal side, that included setting up systems for Company Structures & Workflows. That way, team members know what to do, how to do it, where to do it, when to do it, and who to do it with.

All of this led into your Operations Manual so that you have a well-developed set of Standard Operating Procedures that you can then hand off to anyone. You might even be able to take a vacation then, because you will have confidence in your business’s ability to run successfully without you. What a concept!

That’s the formula for sustained long term business success, right there.

Imagine if you could have all of these pieces securely in place so that you spent less time troubleshooting and reinventing the wheel… how would that impact your business and your life?

Even if you’re currently a solopreneur, someone who is a one-woman or one-man team, it is highly recommended that you still go through each and every of these steps.

Even if your Operations Manual ends up being a two-page document, it’s important to set up these processes so that you can grow and scale efficiently.

Because what happens when you want to start automating or delegating tasks? Having your business tasks clearly documented like this makes that process a whole lot easier.

It’ll save you a lot of time, money, and energy in the long run.

So why are Operations Manuals important?

According to wikipedia, an “operations manual is the documentation by which an organization provides guidance for members and employees to perform their functions correctly and reasonably efficiently. It documents the approved standard procedures for performing operations safely to produce goods and provide services.”

The key here is for team members and employees to be able to perform their functions correctly and efficiently without your direct involvement. Because it’s all documented clearly and task responsibilities and accountabilities are transparent and accessible to everyone.

Remember how we talked about the Bus Factor in the last podcast? The same holds true here.

The bus factor is a measurement of the risk resulting from information and capabilities not being shared among team members, derived from the phrase "in case they get hit by a bus."

What happens when a key team member is suddenly out of commission? If there are processes & systems in place, other team members will be able to pick up the slack and keep the business running in the meantime.

Again, the ultimate goal with setting up processes & systems is to create a business that can run effectively with or without you because that’s a fundamental part of scaling business operations successfully.

If you’ve completed the first four steps of the Processes System, you’re going to have almost everything you need already created. Now, we just need to bring it all together in one doc and format it accordingly.

You can have hard copies, digital copies, whatever you want as long as it is completely transparent and accessible to all team members.

Content will vary depending on the organization, but some basic aspects are fairly universal. Typical sections include:

Welcome letter or Introduction
Company History and/or Products & Services
Organizational hierarchy
Job descriptions & Contact details
Policies
Documented processes and systems
Occupational health and safety instructions
Emergency procedures

Again, you’re going to have most of this information on hand already but you’re also going to have to track down some specifics when it comes to HR laws, payroll compliances, worker’s comp, etc.

So I highly recommend that you consult with a certified HR professional, lawyer, bookkeeper, and/or accountant as you create these documents to make sure that you have all of your legal liabilities covered.

And your Operations Manual should be considered a living, breathing document that you return to and update yearly. Because things will always change, so make sure you keep it as up to date as possible.

Remember to keep this document mostly focused on the broad, company-wide processes that everyone in the company needs to know. These are also known as Standard Operating Procedures - or SOPs.

SOPs aim to achieve efficiency, quality output and uniformity of performance, while reducing miscommunication and failure to comply with relevant policies.

If you have processes & systems that are specific to certain roles, then those need to be detailed in your Work Flow Task Responsibility docs that we discussed in the previous podcast.

Your workflows aren’t necessary to include in full in your Operations Manual, but you need to at least let people know where they can find them. Maybe include them in the Appendices or include links to wherever they are located.

In the Operations Manual, you could include some simple flowcharts to show how positions within the organization work together - but keep the position responsibility specifics separate. You don’t want to overload your team members with information they don’t need to know.

So the overall question here is:

How can you set up an operations manual so that your team has really clear internal expectations for how the company functions?

If you’re able to document these processes and make them accessible to everyone, then they won’t be coming to you each and every time they have a question about something.

If they need to ask about your sick leave policies, or emergency procedures, or what Matt from Accounting’s phone number is… then you can direct them to the Operations Manual instead of spending your time tracking down the answer for them.

I understand that this can be a big undertaking sometimes, but if you follow the five steps in order, then you should have almost everything you need already.

Just remember to consult with a certified HR professional, lawyer, bookkeeper, and/or accountant as you create these documents to make sure that you have all of your legal liabilities covered.

Alright, so that’s it for this podcast series, I really hope you guys enjoyed it!

Over the course of the year, we dove into the Three Pillars of Business Success: Sustainable Schedules, Marketing Strategies, and Processes & Systems because they represent the fundamental structures that need to be put in place in order to grow and scale your business efficiently.

Remember, you can’t build a skyscraper on the foundation of a two story house. You need to build a foundation that will support the weight of the skyscraper for years to come. It’s the exact same with businesses.

Your current systems and structures are going to crumble under the weight of future growth, unless you invest the time, money, and energy into strengthening them.

It’s like hiring an architect. You could just drive to the lumber store, watch a couple of YouTube videos, and try to build a house yourself.

Or, you could hire an architect that has the experience and knows how to build houses that are sturdy and up to code.

I see this happen all the time with businesses. They often believe that, in order to grow their businesses and increase their profits, they need to increase the volume of incoming clients and customers. So they decide to invest a ton of time, money, and energy into creating marketing content like blog posts, videos, podcasts, social media ads, and whatnot.

While effective marketing strategies are a key part to growing businesses, more often than not simply increasing the volume of incoming clients and customers will end up breaking your systems because they become overloaded with new business that the structures just simply can’t support.

When you have a two story building and want it to become a 10 story building, you can’t just add extra floors hoping for the best. The foundation and frame will crumble under the new weight.

That’s why it is so important to intentionally and strategically strengthen your internal systems while also streamlining your marketing efforts so that you get quality ROI instead of just quantity ROI. That’s what contributes to sustainable growth, not stressful boom and bust cycles.

If any of this is resonating with you, please do not hesitate to reach out. I’m always here for you.

And if you want support with implementing this information into your own life and business, I am offering a special discount to those of you who have joined me for this podcast series. As a valued participant, I will offer you 15% off of my programs.

Just visit linktr.ee/liminalclarity to fill out the Free Consult Application on my website and mention that you’re interested in the Podcast 15% Off Discount. Then we can set up a time to discuss the goals and dreams you have for your business and how we can get you there.

As always, you can find the episode outline, video recording, transcript downloads, related links, etc. below.

And, until we meet again, love you all, take care, and I hope you have a good day wherever you are.

[music outro]

View Details

VIDEO RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/QmsuBJzEkzw

RELATED LINKS:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders

https://linktr.ee/liminalclarity

https://www.liminalclarity.com/podcasts/

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone, welcome to the Balanced Business Leaders Podcast hosted by yours truly, Claire Jones, owner of Liminal Clarity. We are a business development agency that helps small business leaders scale and grow without burning out.

This is the next podcast in a series where we will be discussing the various trials and tribulations that lead me to creating my Three Pillars of Business Success, a framework that represents the foundational systems that contribute to sustainable business growth.

If you’re interested in learning more, please join us in our free Balanced Business Leaders Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders.

Ready? Alright, let’s dive in.

[musical intro]

So I started this podcast as a way to tell my story, particularly when it comes to the many, many different lessons that I have learned over the years when it comes to founding, developing, running, and growing small businesses.

This particular episode is about the fourth step to creating effective Processes & Systems for your business - Company Structures & Workflows. This is important because you need to set internal expectations so that your team members know what exactly they’re responsible for.

Company Structures and Work Flows are important aspects to the long term success of your business because they document and distribute the weight of task responsibility evenly across the company so that one person (or one software application) doesn’t become a bottleneck.

They also provide some fail safes in the sense that if one person or one software application is suddenly out of commission, then the business can continue functioning.

Some people call this the “Bus Factor”. The bus factor is a measurement of the risk resulting from information and capabilities not being shared among team members, derived from the phrase "in case they get hit by a bus." The term was first applied to software development, where a team member might create critical components by crafting code that performs well, but which also is unavailable to other team members, such as work that was undocumented, never shared, encrypted, obfuscated, unpublished, or otherwise incomprehensible to others. Thus a key component would be effectively lost as a direct consequence of the absence of that team member, making the member key. If this component was key to the project's advancement, the project would stall.

This again boils down to the concept of diversification and not putting all of your eggs in one basket. This applies to marketing methods - for example, you don’t want all of your marketing eggs to be devoted to one marketing platform because what happens when that platform disappears?

The same applies to task responsibility and business management in general. We want to document as many processes, procedures, systems, and tasks as possible so that the information is still available when/if key people or softwares run into problems.

These systems also help with micromanagement. For example, I once worked with an Operations Manager who often needed to know all the details, wanted to be “the decider”, had difficulties delegating tasks, was suspicious of staff members, and often reacted alarmingly to inter-team collaborations that occurred without her prior approval.

But the problem was that she often acted as a bottleneck because, since she wanted to approve every action that any team member made, she was overwhelmed, harried, and frustrated - taking it out on the company founder and the employees. She halfheartedly took a vacation once per year and, even then, she was still micromanaging the day to day operations from afar because she didn’t have faith in the team members’ ability to function without her.

That’s not how you grow and scale a business sustainably. Because what happens when the team grows to a size where she can’t feasibly manage them all? What happens when she inevitably burns out and/or gets injured?

That’s why Company Structures and Work Flows are so important.

Alright, so let’s dive in…

I’m going to start with the big picture here, which is the overarching Company Structure. This is going to be entirely dependent on how many people (or softwares) are involved in running the business.

If you’re a solopreneur, it is still important to set this up because you’re going to want to start delegating or automating tasks at some point. So I recommend setting this up sooner rather than later. To start, you’ll probably be putting your name in each position title but this gives you a great picture of the various categories of tasks and how they can be divided up.

If you already have some people or softwares that you work with, start filling out the position titles accordingly. For example, you might want to include your bookkeeper, your social media management software, your VA… basically anyone or anything that you rely on for recurring tasks.

You can make this chart in a variety of programs: spreadsheets, powerpoints, Canva, Google Docs, Word Docs, paper and pen, anything really. Some people call this an organization chart, but it’s just a visual representation of your company’s positions and their relationships to one another.

It’s going to provide you with a really clear picture of what categories of tasks are needed in the company, which people or softwares are responsible for them, and how each of the positions or tech programs communicate with each other in order to achieve company-wide goals.

Remember, these positions are going to change based on your specific business model. If you map this out sooner rather than later, you will get a clear picture of what positions you may need to hire for, what software applications you may need to implement, who reports to whom, and how tasks are distributed across roles.

Once you have these overarching structures set up, then you can easily translate them into task responsibilities.

You can use a variety of applications for this. Going off of what we covered in the Client Journey podcast when we talked about project management, what specific actions need to be taken by each position on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis and how are those actions going to be tracked?

There are project management softwares like Trello, Basecamp, Asana, or Monday.com but you can also use simple Google Docs or Words Docs that are shared on a common platform like Google Drive, OneDrive, or DropBox.

I personally like to use Google Docs because that’s where I host all of my business files, but you need to find a system that works for you and your team. Prioritize user experience here, because you don’t want to waste time and money setting up a system that your team isn’t going to use. You need to make sure that the system is accessible and easy to use for everyone involved.

The overarching goal here is to document who is responsible for which tasks, when those tasks should be done, and how they are going to be kept accountable to those tasks.

No matter where you decide to host this system, they are meant to be living, breathing documents that are routinely updated when things change - because things always change.

I recommend that you set up quarterly check-ins with each team member to go over their responsibilities and positions to make sure that everyone is still on the same page. Most companies do yearly reviews, but I recommend setting up a more frequent schedule because you are better able to adjust or redirect quickly and easily if things are caught early on.

A quick note on performance reviews -

Keep in mind that you are on the same team as your team members, so performance reviews should not be something that is dreaded, feared, or avoided. They should be collaborative meetings in which you honestly and openly ask for feedback from your team members. I encourage you to use self-reflective performance reviews in which the team members review their own performance. If you want any more information on this, I provide some guidelines in my Sustainable Schedules podcasts in regards to effective delegation and team management techniques.

You need to have a list of task responsibilities for each position - including both people and softwares. It will detail what tasks they are specifically responsible for as well as the frequency of those tasks, due dates, and who (or what) they need to collaborate with in order to complete those tasks.

It is helpful to break these tasks down into daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly tasks. Then, you can easily translate these responsibilities into a project management software that will track their completion.

I know a lot of this stuff is going to be inside your head, as the business owner. But, the key here is getting it out of your head and onto paper so that anyone can understand exactly what is expected of them in order to be successful in that particular role.

Especially when it comes to software applications, having these tasks laid out clearly will help you make better decisions when choosing between softwares. There are a ton of different softwares out there with a ton of different features and I often see business owners cobbling together multiple softwares when they could, instead, streamline and choose one or two softwares that combine tasks together.

Some softwares that I often recommend to my clients are:

Airtable: which has completely customizable spreadsheets and boards that can be used for Customer Project Management, workflow automations, forms, and/or sales pipelines (it is free, up to limit). Airtable is a product of Zapier and has a ton of different integrations, templates, and automations. It’s what I use for my CRM and task tracking.
Apptivo: which is used for Customer Relationship Management, contracts, project management, estimates, invoices, email marketing, and ecommerce (it is $8/mo). It’s a great low-cost option that has robust features.
And Nimble: which is used for Customer Relationship Management, marketing outreach (emails & social media), and sales pipeline management (it is ~$18/mo). Nimble is particularly unique in that it connects directly with your social media accounts and tracks your engagement automatically in your CRM.

The point here is - Documenting the task responsibilities, timelines, and accountabilities makes each position’s routine workflows very straightforward and transparent. It eliminates the guessing game when it comes to who is responsible for what, when, and with whom. This greatly reduces potential confusion and duplicated efforts, which is a waste of time, money, and energy.

Again, if you’re a solopreneur, you’re probably going to start out with your name as the supervisor and assignee for almost every task. But, remember, this is a great way to start delegating and automating tasks - because you will already have a very clear view of what tasks are on the table and how they’re divided, so then you can more easily find people or softwares to offload them to.

Tasks also don’t fall through the cracks this way. Once you’re able to set up a system that will notify everyone of their daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly responsibilities, then you can very easily track - did this particular task get done? Why or why not?

That’s why company structures and position workflows are key to sustainable business success.

So next time, we’ll be going more in depth into the fifth step of Processes & Systems, Operations Manuals. I hope to interweave my personal experiences with the business lessons I learned along the way so that I can paint a full picture for you guys.

And please let me know what you think! I am always open to feedback and love connecting with my audiences.

If you want to learn more, I personally invite you to join us in the Balanced Business Leaders VIP Group Program. In as little as one hour per week, you will walk away with a clear action plan to grow and scale your business sustainably.

Please visit linktr.ee/liminalclarity for more information.

You can find the episode outline, video recording, transcript downloads, related links, etc. below.

And, until next time, love you all, take care, and I hope you have a good day wherever you are.

[music outro]

View Details

VIDEO RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/fOOh23tgpqM

RELATED LINKS:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders

https://linktr.ee/liminalclarity

https://www.liminalclarity.com/podcasts/

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone, welcome to the Balanced Business Leaders Podcast hosted by yours truly, Claire Jones, owner of Liminal Clarity. We are a business development agency that helps small business leaders scale and grow without burning out.

This is the next podcast in a series where we will be discussing the various trials and tribulations that lead me to creating my Three Pillars of Business Success, a framework that represents the foundational systems that contribute to sustainable business growth.

If you’re interested in learning more, please join us in our free Balanced Business Leaders Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders.

Ready? Alright, let’s dive in.

[musical intro]

So I started this podcast as a way to tell my story, particularly when it comes to the many, many different lessons that I have learned over the years when it comes to founding, developing, running, and growing small businesses.

This particular episode is about the third step to creating effective Processes & Systems for your business - the client journey. This is important because you need to set external expectations so that your customers are clear about how you will work with them.

Taking care of your clients is the best form of marketing. It’s much cheaper to keep a client than to go find a new one.

Plus, satisfied customers are also the most highly trusted marketing source for other consumers. Word of mouth, referrals, and social proof are considered king in the marketing world.

This is true for both service-based and product-based businesses. Like I’ve said before - no matter what your business does, your primary business aim should be creating happy, satisfied customers.

So how can you set up the systems and structures that support an enjoyable client experience for them?

The preliminary step to all of this, which we won’t be going over today, is the marketing and sales process. These kinds of structures are covered by my second pillar, Marketing Strategies, which we covered in previous podcasts.

If you missed them, all you need to know is that the marketing and sales process invites the customer to develop that know, like, and trust factor with you and your company. There are clearly defined steps that they can take as they follow the path to engaging with your products and services. It’s not really a sales funnel at the end of the day, it’s a trust funnel.

There should always be some type of discovery process involved, in which you get to know your potential customers. You need to have a clear understanding of what your services and products look like from their point of view - how do your offerings fit into their lives? How does your service or product directly address the problem, issue, challenge, opportunity, or pain point that they are facing? What exactly will entice them to engage with your company?

This discovery process will directly lead into the sale, because they will be much more likely to buy if they feel like your service or product addresses their particular wants and needs. Understanding their wants and needs up front will greatly increase the chance of a sale.

But, what happens after they say, “Yes, I want to buy it”?

That’s where the Client Journey comes into play, and we always kick it off with some onboarding..

Before we begin, let’s first talk about the importance of clear, straightforward communication. This is something that needs to be prioritized throughout the Client Journey because you need to provide the customer with a sense of clarity and certainty every step of the way. Don’t make them guess.

During the onboarding process, this usually looks like some sort of welcome email that outlines everything they should expect as they purchase, receive, and use your product or service.

In this welcome email, there should be:

A contract or purchase agreement
An invoice or payment process
The delivery details
An outline of next steps

Number one, a contract or purchase agreement can come in a variety of forms. If you’re a service-based business, it’s most likely going to be a full-form contract with legal liabilities, deliverables, project scopes, pricing, responsibilities, etc. detailed for them to sign off on.

If you’re a product-based business, this is probably going to be a sentence or two - maybe a paragraph - on their receipt that explains your sale conditions. Are returns available? Do you have a warranty agreement? Stuff like that.

Number two, the invoice or payment process is basically the means through which they give you their money. If you’re a service-based business, this is typically an invoice that is generated through your accounting software, customer relationship manager software, ecommerce store, or payment processor.

If you’re a product-based business, this is probably going to be a transaction generated by your ecommerce store or point of sale system. It’s just a confirmation that money will be or has been exchanged.

Number three, the delivery details are going to be directly related to whatever they are buying from you. If you’re a service-based business, they need to know how you are going to deliver the service. Is it going to be in multiple sessions or appointments? Is it long term? Short term? What benchmarks, milestones, or outcomes can they expect to see? Really spell it out for them so that they know what to expect.

If you’re a product-based business, this is most likely going to be the shipping information. Is it being shipped by USPS? FedEx? Is there a tracking number? Are there delivery charges involved? When should the customer expect to receive it? If the product is very large, like a couch, are there going to be delivery people who help bring it indoors?

Number four, always make sure to outline the next steps for them so that, again, they know what to expect. If you’re a service-based business, do they need to prepare anything before your services commence? Do they need to do anything after they receive your services? Do they need to show up at a certain place at a certain time? Do they need to wear specific clothing or bring specific supplies with them?

If you’re a product-based business, do they need installation directions? Do they need instructions on how to use the product? Do you need to notify them of any warnings or best practices?

Basically, what do they need to know in order to use your product or service?

Next comes project management:

If you’re a service-based business, you’re going to have a much more in-depth process for this (especially if multiple people are involved with providing the services).

You need to have some way to track the progress of your service fulfillment process. If it’s just you, it could be a simple list of steps that you need to complete in order to provide the service. But if you have a team, then you’re probably going to need a project management software to track each person’s individual contributions to the service provided.

If you’re a product-based business, this is going to include the process by which you fulfill the order. How is it going to be packaged? Who is responsible for getting it shipped or delivered in a timely manner? How are you going to track and update your inventory levels?

What is the specific sequence of actions that need to be taken once you receive an order?

Again, this can be easily automated. If you have a solid point of sale or ecommerce software, it will usually handle all of the shipping and inventory tracking for you. Or, you can even consider drop shipping services - where you undertake a contract with a warehouse somewhere that will hold, process, and ship all of your inventory for you.

Finally comes the offboarding process. This typically includes surveys, reviews, and/or some type of follow up communication.

Surveys can be super helpful when it comes to quality assurance and tracking your customers’ satisfaction levels with your product or service. They can also be used for product or service testing, research and development, or customer relationship management.

Plus, Surveys and Reviews can sometimes be the same thing. If customers are providing you with positive feedback in response to the survey questions, you may want to include a disclosure statement or question notifying them that their comments may be publicly posted on your website, social media feeds, or elsewhere (if that’s allowed within your industry).

Reviews are also typically sent via email and can include long-form comment fields or links to online review platforms like Amazon reviews, Google reviews, Facebook reviews, and/or Yelp reviews.

Again, both surveys and reviews can be easily automated through your email campaign manager, customer relationship manager, point of sale system, ecommerce store, and/or third party softwares. If you need help deciding which programs to use, hit me up.

And, finally, you need to set up some type of process for customer follow up. The surveys and reviews can certainly be a part of the follow up process, but I really want you to implement follow up strategies long term so that you can continue to build relationships with your customers and hopefully turn them into long term, recurring sales.

Re-engaging inactive customers and clients, like I’ve said before, is the cheapest and easiest way to make sales. Typically, if they’ve been a customer in the past, you already have their information. You have their phone number, their email, their address - so it's really easy to create long term touch points with inactive customers.

Maybe they bought from you three months ago, maybe they bought from you five years ago, it only takes 1 to 3 touchpoints (on average) in order to re-engage them.

So what do these touchpoints look like? It can look like email campaigns, newsletters, phone calls - maybe you want to call them and check in on how they're doing. Maybe you want to send them a follow up email to find out how they're liking the product that they bought from you - maybe find out if they want more.

What we’re talking about here with client processes is really about developing that customer relationship beyond the sale. If we treat our customers like sales transactions, they’re going to feel devalued. They’re going to feel like they’re just a number in the system.

But if you take the time to develop relationships with them, develop clear communication, clear expectations, and value their opinions, then they’re going to feel heard, they’re going to feel seen, they’re going to feel cared for because they have a sense of certainty, clarity, and value as they work with you.

They’re going to become loyal fans, and loyal fans beget more loyal fans. It’s a great snowball effect. They’re going to sing your praises to everyone they know, because people will go to extraordinary lengths to support the people that they know, like, and trust. It’s how our brains work.

It’s also going to make your life easier. It’s going to save you time, money, and energy if you set up replicable systems that consistently provide quality results. Just rinse and repeat.

That’s why developing a clear Client Journey is one of the key aspects to long term, sustainable business success.

So next time, we’ll be going more in depth into the fourth step of Processes & Systems, Company Structures & Workflows. I hope to interweave my personal experiences with the business lessons I learned along the way so that I can paint a full picture for you guys.

And please let me know what you think! I am always open to feedback and love connecting with my audiences.

If you want to learn more, I personally invite you to join us in the Balanced Business Leaders VIP Group Program. In as little as one hour per week, you will walk away with a clear action plan to grow and scale your business sustainably.

Please visit linktr.ee/liminalclarity for more information.

You can find the episode outline, video recording, transcript downloads, related links, etc. below.

And, until next time, love you all, take care, and I hope you have a good day wherever you are.

[music outro]

View Details

VIDEO RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/HIvnmMbQZKg

RELATED LINKS:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders

https://linktr.ee/liminalclarity

https://www.liminalclarity.com/podcasts/

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone, welcome to the Balanced Business Leaders Podcast hosted by yours truly, Claire Jones, owner of Liminal Clarity. We are a business development agency that helps small business leaders scale and grow without burning out.

This is the next podcast in a series where we will be discussing the various trials and tribulations that lead me to creating my Three Pillars of Business Success, a framework that represents the foundational systems that contribute to sustainable business growth.

If you’re interested in learning more, please join us in our free Balanced Business Leaders Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders.

Ready? Alright, let’s dive in.

[musical intro]

So I started this podcast as a way to tell my story, particularly when it comes to the many, many different lessons that I have learned over the years when it comes to founding, developing, running, and growing small businesses.

This particular episode is about the second step to creating effective Processes & Systems for your business - financial processes. These are important because you need to take control over your finances and implement the processes that will track all of it

Did you know that 35.6% of business owners don’t use accounting software? (source: Statistia)

Did you know that 27% don’t have a separate bank account for their business? (source: Clutch)

And that 23% say they’re worried about commingling personal and business expenses?

These statistics are exactly why setting up solid financial processes for your business is so important. If you don’t, you’re putting yourself at risk for:

Being short on cash
Facing unexpected tax bills
Failing to claim business tax deductions
Getting audited by the IRS
Not being able to access capital, like business loans
Not understanding your legal liability

I’ve seen too many small businesses struggle to understand their financial situation, let alone stay on top of it.

More often than not, these skill sets are not something within their zones of genius and, because it’s in their discomfort zone, they tend to avoid dealing with it altogether.

Money is an emotional subject, and, if math was not your favorite subject in school, it tends to get very overwhelming very quickly.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. With the right systems and structures in place, it can even be easy.

So where do we start?

First things first, get yourself a separate business banking account. I usually recommend going with a credit union bank because they typically have more accessibility, support, and perks for their members than big corporate banks.

Get both a checking and savings account. The checking is going to be for your income and expenses, and the savings is going to be for your tax money and/or any business savings.

Some people even recommend getting multiple checking accounts - one for income and one for expenses - but that’s typically not necessary if you can stay on top of your cash flow reporting.

Second, create your initial Cash Flow Report for at least one month leading up to Opening Day and 12 months after Opening Day. Month zero should detail your starting financial position, including any start up capital or costs that lead up to Opening Day.

If you are setting these up after you’ve already launched your business, month zero should detail your current financial position - including the cash you currently have on hand, the debts you currently owe, as well as any equipment, tools, or furniture that you’ve purchased exclusively for business use.

It’s basically a 13-month spreadsheet that details the business’s financial position over time. This way, we can predict what our cash position will be in any given month. This helps us better understand and plan for busy months, slow months, quarterly expenses, yearly expenses, big purchases, wages, tax payments, etc.

You can find Cash Flow templates all over the internet, the Small Business Administration SCORE website has some great free downloadable templates. Or you can purchase them from someone else, like myself or a bookkeeper.

If you are starting your business from scratch, your numbers are going to be a bit of a guessing game. But, it will provide you with an estimated picture of what kind of financial support your business is going to need in order to survive the first year or so. This is very, very, very helpful when it comes to acquiring start up capital and funding.

Whether you are funding the business yourself or seeking capital from another source, you need to have a good idea of how much you need. This cash flow report is going to provide you with a clear picture of that.

If you’ve already been running your business for a period of time, these numbers are typically going to be found in your bills, contracts, receipts, point of sale system, and credit card or bank statements. I recommend gathering copies of them all up in one place so that you can reference them easily as you go through your Cash Flow spreadsheet.

Again, this is why keeping a separate business bank account and/or credit card is super helpful. Then you don’t have to comb through all of your personal accounts to pick out your business expenses or income.

Third, set up an accounting software to track revenue and expenses.

This kind of software is going to help you a ton when it comes to tracking the income and expense categories on your Cash Flow Report on a recurring basis. It’s also going to help a ton when it comes to yearly tax time, many software applications will provide you with all of the reports that your accountant or bookkeeper asks for.

Wave Apps is free and great if your needs are fairly simple. FreshBooks and QuickBooks have different subscription levels. They all come preloaded with a default chart of accounts that makes getting started easy. You can customize later.

If you are a sole proprietor or single member LLC, I prefer Quickbooks Online Self Employed because it’s simple, you can access it from anywhere, and it hooks up to a phone app that can track your business mileage automatically.

If you are registered as a corporation or multi-member LLC, then I would recommend Quickbooks Online. It offers more robust reporting and tracking when there are more variables involved.

Also, all Quickbooks products are owned by Intuit so they have a built-in integration with TurboTax.

If you use Intuit TurboTax Business to prepare and file your taxes, you can import your QuickBooks data directly into the application.

Quickbooks also provides invoicing as well as a Point of Sale system so that you can handle all of your payment processing through them if you want. This helps you avoid having to pay for a whole separate payment processing system.

These three fundamental steps will get you set up. Once these are in place, then you can decide whether the maintenance tasks are something you want to DIY or delegate to someone else.

But do keep in mind that you’ll want to have a certified CPA, bookkeeper, and/or accountant review the systems you put in place so that you can minimize your risk of missing something sooner rather than later.

I have a recurring weekly task for updating my Quickbooks account every Friday afternoon. It’s basically 15 minutes where I sit down and go through all of that week’s transactions on Quickbooks, categorize them in their various income and expense categories, and transfer my tax money over to my business savings account.

Alright, let’s talk about taxes for a bit. Now the exact tax amount that you are going to be responsible for is going to vary industry to industry, state to state, county to county, city to city, and country to country.

Your tax rates are also going to depend heavily on what your business’s legal structure is, whether you’re a sole proprietor, a partnership, an LLC, or a corporation.

So always, always, always confirm the rates with a certified bookkeeper or accountant first. And never assume that a tax law is going to stay the same from one year to the next, so make sure to keep your information updated accordingly.

As additional help, you should get a copy of the IRS’s “Tax Guide for Small Business” (Publication 334), from from any IRS office, along with a list of their other free small business publications. These are all excellent and reliable references. You can find these tax publications on the IRS’s website, www.irs.gov.

The details when it comes to tax laws are complicated, convoluted, and full of “ifs, ands, and buts”. The information that I’m presenting here is the bare minimum basics that you should keep an eye on as part of your financial processes.

I am not a certified bookkeeper or accountant, so do not take my advice as the last word. These are just the basics that I’ve learned after running small businesses for 15 years.

The overarching rule of thumb for this is to save more than you think you’ll need. You can always give out bonuses or invest that extra money back into your business later on.

Side note: I highly recommend investing any extra money back into your business, it’ll pay off much more in the long run compared to keeping it for yourself.

Alright, so sole proprietors must file a federal income tax return if your net earnings from self-employment (your business profit) are $400 or more for that year. Net earnings means your total gross revenue minus your total expenses. It’s also known as net profit.

Partnerships, corporations, and LLCs must file a return no matter what the profit or loss is.

Generally, sole proprietors, partnerships, and LLCs must submit their federal tax return by April 15th. Corporations must submit their federal tax return by March 15th.

Remember, all of this is highly dependent on your business’s legal structure and your city, county, state, and federal laws.

And, if you are interested in learning more or getting a deeper understanding of the basics that I’m presenting today - there’s a fantastic book called Small Time Operator by Bernard Kamoroff that I highly recommend you check out.

I consider this book to be my Bible when it comes to creating and running a small business. I’ve read through it multiple times at different phases in my life and each time I learn something new and worthwhile. It is my go-to reference tool when I have questions about financials, taxes, legalities, hiring/firing, and everything in between. I highly recommend this for anyone who is considering starting their own small business, or anyone who wants to make sure their existing small business is on the up and up.

So next time, we’ll be going more in depth into the third step of Processes & Systems, the Client Journey. I hope to interweave my personal experiences with the business lessons I learned along the way so that I can paint a full picture for you guys.

And please let me know what you think! I am always open to feedback and love connecting with my audiences.

If you want to learn more, I personally invite you to join us in the Balanced Business Leaders VIP Group Program. In as little as one hour per week, you will walk away with a clear action plan to grow and scale your business sustainably.

Please visit linktr.ee/liminalclarity for more information.

You can find the episode outline, video recording, transcript downloads, related links, etc. below.

And, until next time, love you all, take care, and I hope you have a good day wherever you are.

[music outro]

View Details

VIDEO RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/R0tuKHGxHWs

RELATED LINKS:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders

https://linktr.ee/liminalclarity

https://www.liminalclarity.com/podcasts/

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone, welcome to the Balanced Business Leaders Podcast hosted by yours truly, Claire Jones, owner of Liminal Clarity. We are a business development agency that helps small business leaders scale and grow without burning out.

This is the next podcast in a series where we will be discussing the various trials and tribulations that lead me to creating my Three Pillars of Business Success, a framework that represents the foundational systems that contribute to sustainable business growth.

If you’re interested in learning more, please join us in our free Balanced Business Leaders Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders.

Ready? Alright, let’s dive in.

[musical intro]

So I started this podcast as a way to tell my story, particularly when it comes to the many, many different lessons that I have learned over the years when it comes to founding, developing, running, and growing small businesses.

This particular episode is about the first step to creating effective Processes & Systems for your business - a solid business plan. These are important because you need to plan out all of the aspects of your business that contribute to long term success.

To give you a little bit of background, my first business plan that I ever made was part of a capstone project that was required for the Art & Business Semester Program that I did as my abroad education during my junior year of college. It was part of the Sotheby’s Institute of Art in London and, as part of our schoolwork, we had to develop an art business idea that we were “pitching” to a group of investors - who were basically our teachers posing as important bankers and financiers.

It was a group project, so I wasn’t alone in creating the whole business plan by myself but it was a great introduction to what was required in order to conceive, plan, develop, and pitch a fleshed out business venture.

My second opportunity to create a business plan was when I started my own first business about four years later, but this time I was doing it all by myself.

And it was definitely much scarier because it felt like it was for real this time around, but I was well-armed with my research skills and looked to Google in order to figure it out. I put in the time, did the research, made the spreadsheets, and then used it to secure funding - and it worked!

I ended up fundraising around $30k with an additional $10k coming from my business partners, and that’s pretty much how I started my first business. It was a brick and mortar general store devoted to local goods so it required a lot of start up capital as well as generated a significant amount of overhead on a monthly basis.

Fast forward another four years, and I found myself (yet again) creating another business plan. This time around, though, it wasn’t as in depth or as formalized as my previous one because it was for a service-based at-home business - which turned out to be Liminal Clarity.

For my current business, I didn’t need to develop the business plan as comprehensively because I knew that my overhead expenses and operational needs would be minimal as a home-based business. So I set up the processes and procedures that I knew would be necessary and left the rest for later on.

This is all to illustrate that a business plan serves several purposes. It can help convince investors or lenders to finance your business, and it can also persuade partners or key employees to join your company. Most importantly, though, it serves as a blueprint guiding the management and growth of your business.

Writing a business plan is an opportunity to carefully think through every step of your company so you can prepare for success. This is your chance to discover any weaknesses in your business idea, identify opportunities you may not have considered, and plan how you will deal with challenges that are likely to arise. Be honest with yourself as you work through your business plan. Don’t gloss over potential problems; instead, figure out solutions.

A good business plan is clear and concise. A person outside of your industry should be able to understand it. Avoid overusing industry jargon or terminology.

Most of the time involved in writing your plan should be spent researching and thinking. Make sure to document your research, including the sources of any information you include.

Avoid making unsubstantiated claims or sweeping statements. Investors, lenders, and others reading your plan will want to see realistic projections and expect your assumptions to be supported with facts.

And I truly believe that a business plan should be a living, breathing document that you return to and update every single year. Because things always change.

The industry changes, culture changes, people change. Change is a constant so you need to routinely tweak and adjust your plans accordingly.

For example, many companies do their yearly planning around October since that gives them a rolling 3-month runway into the new year.

This is a perfect opportunity to dust off your business plan and update it.

Personally, I block out a whole week in October where I work exclusively on yearly planning. I update my business plan, my cash flow predictions, and my strategic timelines for the upcoming year. So then when January rolls around, I already have my plans in motion and am prepared to keep the momentum going.

Alright, so starting with the basic outline of a business plan -

There are nine main parts:

The executive summary
The company description
Your products & services
Your marketing plan
Your operational plan
The management and organizational structure
Your startup finances
Your financial plan
And the appendices

Some other parts that are important to include are a:

Cover sheet with your business name (and logo, if you have one)
Confidentiality agreement (basically a small blurb asking the reader to agree not to share your business plan information with anyone else)
And a table of contents (so that readers can navigate your plan easily)

And remember to number your pages along with a copyright notice, you don’t want anyone stealing your shit.

Business plans tend to vary in length, depending on how complex your business is. Sometimes they’re a couple of pages, sometimes they're upwards of 20 pages in length. The point is to clearly and concisely describe each aspect of your business so that you have a solid blueprint of how you’re going to manage and grow your business.

The main questions that you’re trying to answer here are:

What values does your business live by? What are the guiding principles that inform all of your business decisions?
What is your long term outlook for the business? What do you ultimately want to achieve? And, what specific milestones will get you there?
Who precisely are you serving? What does your business look like in the eyes of your customers?
What product or service does your business provide and what result does it help your customers accomplish?
What are your competitive advantages and how do you plan to maintain your market visibility?
How exactly do you provide your product or service? What are the exact steps, systems, support structures, people, or softwares that you need to provide a quality product or service?
What does your financial forecast look like? What kind of financial support or systems do you need in order to be profitable and sustainable?
And, overall, what variables could make or break your success? How do you plan to manage them?

If you figure out all of these factors ahead of time, it will be much easier to make decisions as you go. A business plan represents your overarching strategy so that you can better align your daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly action items with your long term goals.

Whenever you’re trying to decide whether to go in this direction or that, you can return to your business plan and use it as a guide.

Only if you know WHERE your business is going, can you know WHY the specific behaviors, actions, or activities are important.

Instead of getting stuck in a guessing game, where you spend too much of your time throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks - a solid business plan will help you better prioritize where you and your team invest your time, money, and energy.

And, like I mentioned before, business plans can be created or updated at any point in time.

I’ve worked on business plan programs with some clients who have been in business for 2 months, 10 years, and 55 years.

The common denominator was that they were looking for clarity. They were looking for a specific plan to grow their business in one way or another.

They had a vague idea of where they wanted their business to go but didn’t know how exactly to get there. So, instead of guessing in a game of trial and error, they made a business plan to guide their actions.

Some people call this a “hedgehog idea”. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend that you go check out a book called Good to Great by Jim Collins. In it, he presents decades of research into why some companies go from mediocrity to greatness and some don’t.

One of the key factors, he asserts, is this idea of a “hedgehog concept”. It comes from Isaiah Berlin’s famous essay called “The Hedgehog and the Fox”. In it, Berlin divided the world into hedgehogs and foxes, based upon the ancient Greek parable: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”

As Collins explains, “The fox is a cunning creature, able to devise a myriad of complex strategies for sneak attacks upon the hedgehog. Day in and day out, the fox circles around the hedgehog’s den, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce.”

Whenever the fox does get an opportunity to attack the hedgehog, however, the hedgehog simply “becomes a sphere of shark spikes, pointing outward in all directions… Each day, some version of this battle between the hedgehog and the fox takes place, and despite the greater cunning of the fox, the hedgehog always wins.”

Berlin, in his essay, divides people into the same two categories: foxes and hedgehogs. “Foxes pursue many ends at the same time and see the world in all its complexity. They are ‘scattered or diffused, moving on many levels,’ says Berlin, never integrating their thinking into one overall concept or unifying vision.

Hedgehogs, on the other hand, simplify a complex world into a single organizing idea, a basic principle or concept that unifies and guides everything… For the hedgehog, anything that does not somehow relate to the hedgehog idea holds no relevance.”

And, they’re very successful as a result. That’s what a business plan can be. It can document your business’s hedgehog idea, an idea that will unify and guide everything you do.

So next time, we’ll be going more in depth into the second step of Processes & Systems, Business Finances. I hope to interweave my personal experiences with the business lessons I learned along the way so that I can paint a full picture for you guys.

And please let me know what you think! I am always open to feedback and love connecting with my audiences.

If you want to learn more, I personally invite you to join us in the Balanced Business Leaders VIP Group Program. In as little as one hour per week, you will walk away with a clear action plan to grow and scale your business sustainably.

Please visit linktr.ee/liminalclarity for more information.

You can find the episode outline, video recording, transcript downloads, related links, etc. below.

And, until next time, love you all, take care, and I hope you have a good day wherever you are.

[music outro]

View Details

VIDEO RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/rSJ85L-PKlo

RELATED LINKS:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders

https://linktr.ee/liminalclarity

https://www.liminalclarity.com/podcasts/

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone, welcome to the Balanced Business Leaders Podcast hosted by yours truly, Claire Jones, owner of Liminal Clarity. We are a business development agency that helps small business leaders scale and grow without burning out.

This is the next podcast in a series where we will be discussing the various trials and tribulations that lead me to creating my Three Pillars of Business Success, a framework that represents the foundational systems that contribute to sustainable business growth.

If you’re interested in learning more, please join us in our free Balanced Business Leaders Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders.

Ready? Alright, let’s dive in.

[musical intro]

So I started this podcast as a way to tell my story, particularly when it comes to the many, many different lessons that I have learned over the years when it comes to founding, developing, running, and growing small businesses.

This particular episode is an introduction into the third pillar of business success - Processes & Systems. These are important because they represent the foundations upon which business growth is built.

In order to survive an earthquake, buildings need to be both structurally sound and flexible enough to move with the tremors.

In order to grow sustainably, your business also needs to have stable foundations as well as practices that proactively respond to changes in the landscape.

Processes & systems represent these stable foundations that will help support the business alongside with you so that you’re not carrying the whole thing by yourself.

By documenting everything, you can then much more easily automate or delegate responsibilities.

By getting a clear understanding of the bird’s eye view of your business, you will be able to see the forest - not just the trees. This will help keep you out of the weeds on a day to day basis so that you can make clearer, more strategic decisions to move your company forward.

We’re basically aiming at more clarity, more structure, and less overwhelm here.

That’s the importance of processes & systems.

Your Processes & Systems journey begins with Business Plans so that you can strategically set up your business for success. A well-developed business plan will provide you with a solid blueprint for the management and growth of your business. This is your chance to discover any weaknesses in your business idea, identify opportunities you may not have considered, and plan how you will deal with challenges that are likely to arise.

What we’re talking about here is planning ahead so that you can direct and guide your business according to the compass that is your company values, vision, and mission.

A solid business plan answers the questions - “Where do you want to go with this? And how do you plan on getting there?”

There are nine main parts of a business plan:

The executive summary
The company description
Your products & services
Your marketing plan
Your operational plan
The management and organizational structure
Your startup finances
Your financial plan
And the appendices

Business plans tend to vary in length, depending on how complex your business is. Sometimes they’re a couple of pages, sometimes they're upwards of 20 pages in length. The point is to clearly and concisely describe each aspect of your business so that you have a solid blueprint of how you’re going to manage and grow your business.

Next, you can take control over your Finances by learning about the importance of Cash Flow Reporting and handy tools like Quickbooks Online. The key here is setting up the backend systems that will help you track your business’s finances.

If you don’t, you’re putting yourself at risk for:

Being short on cash
Facing unexpected tax bills
Failing to claim business tax deductions
Getting audited by the IRS
Not being able to access capital, like business loans
Not understanding your legal liability

So where do you start?

Get yourself a separate business banking account. This will really help you track business expenses & income if everything is going through a separate account, plus it helps you separate your personal legal liabilities from your business’s legal liabilities.
Create a Cash Flow Reporting system. Your first Cash Flow report should detail your starting financial position as well as the next 12 months so that you can plan ahead. Then, you should routinely update your report so that you can continue planning accordingly.
Set up an accounting software to track revenue and expenses. This will help you stay on top of your tax responsibilities so that taxes aren’t a once-a-year panic fest.

These three fundamental steps will get you set up. Once these are in place, then you can decide whether the maintenance tasks are something you want to DIY or delegate to someone else - like a bookkeeper.

Then comes your Client Journey - basically the process by which you help your clients and customers feel a sense of clarity and certainty by setting external expectations that thoughtfully guide them throughout their time with you. Whether you’re a service-based business or a product-based business, you need to think through each of the steps of your customer’s journey. Remember, like I’ve said before, your overall business goal should be creating satisfied customers.

There are three main parts to a solid Client Journey:

Onboarding
Project management/fulfillment
Offboarding

Each of these are super important and will vary widely depending on what industry your business is in, so it’s highly recommended that you create at least a basic outline of what your Client’s journey looks like.

If you’re a service-based business, you’re going to have a much more in-depth process for this (especially if multiple people are involved with providing the services).

If you’re a product-based business, this is going to be the specific sequence of actions that need to be taken once you receive a purchase order.

And, on the internal side, you can help your team members get clear about what exactly they’re responsible for by setting up Company Structures & Work Flows. This way, they know what to do, how to do it, where to do it, when to do it, and who to do it with. Clear documentation for these processes will help with HR issues, it will help avoid misunderstandings, and it will free up your time because then your team members won’t need to run to you all day every day to ask questions about their responsibilities.

These are important aspects to the long term success of your business because they document and distribute the weight of task responsibility evenly across the company so that one person (or one software application) doesn’t become a bottleneck.

They also provide some fail safes in the sense that if one person or one software application is suddenly out of commission, then the business can continue functioning.

Some people call this the “Bus Factor”. The bus factor is a measurement of the risk resulting from information and capabilities not being shared among team members, derived from the phrase "in case they get hit by a bus."

We want to document as many processes, procedures, systems, and tasks as possible so that the information is still available when/if key people or softwares run into problems.

This all leads into being able to create your Operations Manual, a document that will precisely detail your company’s philosophies, expectations, policies, and guidelines. That way, you will have a well-developed set of Standard Operating Procedures that you can then hand off to anyone. You might even be able to take a vacation then, because you will have confidence in your business’s ability to run successfully without you. What a concept!

If you’ve completed the first four steps of the Processes System, you’re going to have almost everything you need already created. Now, we just need to bring it all together in one doc and format it accordingly.

The key here is for team members and employees to be able to perform their functions correctly and efficiently without your direct involvement. Because it’s all documented clearly and task responsibilities and accountabilities are transparent and accessible to everyone.

You can have hard copies, digital copies, whatever you want as long as it is completely transparent and accessible to all team members.

And your Operations Manual should be considered a living, breathing document that you return to and update yearly. Because things will always change, so make sure you keep it as up to date as possible.

I’ll go more in depth about all of these steps later, but, for now, just keep in mind that all of these 5 steps lead into the next. They are in a certain order for a reason.

They represent the formula for sustained long term business success.

Imagine if you could have all of these pieces securely in place so that you spent less time troubleshooting and reinventing the wheel… how would that impact your business and your life?

Even if you’re currently a solopreneur, someone who is a one-woman or one-man team, it is highly recommended that you still go through each and every of these steps. They will help you make better decisions, identify weaknesses, take advantage of opportunities, and free up your time to work more ON your business rather than IN your business.

So next time, we’ll be going more in depth into the first step of Processes & Systems, Business Plans. I hope to interweave my personal experiences with the business lessons I learned along the way so that I can paint a full picture for you guys.

And please let me know what you think! I am always open to feedback and love connecting with my audiences.

If you want to learn more, I personally invite you to join us in the Balanced Business Leaders VIP Group Program. In as little as one hour per week, you will walk away with a clear action plan to grow and scale your business sustainably.

Please visit linktr.ee/liminalclarity for more information.

You can find the episode outline, video recording, transcript downloads, related links, etc. below.

And, until next time, love you all, take care, and I hope you have a good day wherever you are.

[music outro]

View Details

VIDEO RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/JLaDPAmoSVk

RELATED LINKS:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders

https://linktr.ee/liminalclarity

https://www.liminalclarity.com/podcasts/

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone, welcome to the Balanced Business Leaders Podcast hosted by yours truly, Claire Jones, owner of Liminal Clarity. We are a business development agency that helps small business leaders scale and grow without burning out.

This is the next podcast in a series where we will be discussing the various trials and tribulations that lead me to creating my Three Pillars of Business Success, a framework that represents the foundational systems that contribute to sustainable business growth.

If you’re interested in learning more, please join us in our free Balanced Business Leaders Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders.

Ready? Alright, let’s dive in.

[musical intro]

So I started this podcast as a way to tell my story, particularly when it comes to the many, many different lessons that I have learned over the years when it comes to founding, developing, running, and growing small businesses.

This particular episode is about Content Management, because you need to use the right tools that will save you time and energy as you implement your marketing efforts.

So your Marketing Strategies journey started with figuring out what marketing platforms are going to be best for you and your business so that you can intentionally target your ideal audiences. Remember, there is no cookie cutter solution for this - it is directly linked to who, specifically, would be most interested in your products or services and figuring out where they would be best reached.

Then, we went over Websites & Google My Business so that you can take control over your digital presence. These two things are more important than a brick and mortar location nowadays, people are always going to look you up online so you might as well lean into it.

Then, we figured out how many times you need to have contact with your potential customers in order to engage them with your products or services. This will directly influence your content strategies, remember consistency is king here.

That leads into Content Creation, and knowing what kind of content is going to be ideal for the marketing platforms that you’ve chosen to use in order to reach your ideal audiences. Because we don’t want to waste time by making content for platforms that aren’t going to reach the people we want to reach.

And, finally, we wrap it all up with Content Management. Now that you know where you’re going to market, how often you’re going to market, and what content you’re going to market with - you now need some systems and infrastructures to help organize it all and keep you on track.

This is often the part where people get overwhelmed. They have an idea of where they’re supposed to be posting, they have some ideas for what they’re supposed to be posting, but they’re suddenly overwhelmed by how often they need to post and the sheer amount of content they need to create and manage in order to develop those consistent touchpoints with their audiences.

That’s okay - remember that you’re not alone.

This is where Content Management structures come in so that they do all of the tracking for you.

There are many different types of content calendars out there and many different types of softwares that will help you with this. I’m not going to go into all of your options today though, because I want to provide you with the basic structure of how to use content calendars so that you can apply that knowledge to any calendar or software you may use.

Personally, I use a Google Spreadsheet that I’ve customized (because I love spreadsheets and I find that it has more flexibility than some of the softwares available) but you need to find out what works best for you.

A content calendar is basically going to track what content you plan on posting, on what platform, on what day, and in what order. This way, you can plan out your content in advance, so when the time comes to actually make and post the content - you’re not wasting time trying to figure out what the content is supposed to be.

Think of it as your past self taking care of your future self. Your past self is going to take some time planning out your content so that your future self doesn’t have to make any decisions when the time comes, they just have to do the things.

So I update my content calendar yearly, quarterly, weekly, and daily. These are regular, recurring time blocks that I put on my calendar - check out my podcast on Flexible Time Blocking if you want more information on how I plan out my time.

On a yearly basis - usually in October because that’s when I do all of my big picture planning for the upcoming year - I plan out the year in my content calendar so that I know which holidays are happening on which days plus any big launches or events that I need to plan for.

On a quarterly basis, I plan out my 3-month plan - I go through my general content template (basically the types of content that I know I want to post, like videos, testimonials, or pre-launch posts) and then assign the pieces of content to the next 90 days. This is where I get specific about what the topic of the piece of content is going to be, not just the theme of the content.

So for example, if I know I want to post an Instagram live every Tuesday, I plan out what those IG lives are going to be about based on the launches that I’m doing during that period of time.

So, say I planned to launch a Sustainable Schedules group program in November when I was doing my yearly review of the calendar. Then, when I’m doing my quarterly review, I’m going to plan for my Tuesday IG lives to be about Sustainable Schedule topics in the weeks leading up to that November launch.

So, when a particular Tuesday comes up and I see IG live on my calendar to-do list - I already know exactly what to make the live about so it only takes me 30 minutes to actually film the video instead of spending time planning out what I’m going to say. Past Claire already decided what to say, so I’m going to just do the thing.

Then on a weekly basis, I pre-schedule my weekend posts. And, daily, I create and post my weekday posts and engage with my audiences.

Is this making sense with you all? That’s the overall framework that we’re working with here, when it comes to content calendars.

Now, when it comes to content publishers, these softwares are useful when you are automating all of this wonderful content that you’ve now planned out.

Alright, so, again, there are a lot of different softwares out there that will handle content scheduling for you - it seems like everyone has their favorites.

There are some that will integrate with your content calendars, there are some that will integrate with your CRMs - customer relationship managers - there are some that will integrate with your website. It pretty much depends on how much you want to spend and what kind of user interface you’re comfortable with.

My favorite, for now, is Hootsuite because the free version allows you to connect up to 3 different platforms and schedule up to 30 posts at a time. It also has some great features that will allow you to track the engagement that happens on your platforms as well as hashtag tracking and all kinds of cool stuff.

You can track your posts on the platforms that you link to your Hootsuite account, you can track your mentions on your different platforms, you can track your timelines, your messages, your unpublished posts, your general activity, and your scheduled posts.

Again, there are similar features on most content scheduling platforms. Some of the most popular are Buffer, HootSuite, Sprout Social, CoSchedule, Edgar, and Zoho. Everyone has their favorite, so it’s difficult to determine an industry standard for this category of softwares. You just gotta find the one that works best for you, but, at the end of the day, anything is better than nothing.

These tools allow you to basically keep track of what all your profiles are doing in one location. This prevents the time suck that is switching between all of the different platforms in order to post, review, engage, etc.

Now, this is where I want to remind you about the previous podcast when we talked about social media captions.

Remember that the format of the captions are going to be different depending on what platform you’re posting to.

For Facebook, you CAN use URLs in the captions and it allows more text than other platforms.

For LinkedIn, you CAN also use URLs in the captions - but they will automatically be reformatted to look like LinkedIn URLs. So liminalclarity.com will turn into something like lnkd.in/gDbcRZE. Also, LinkedIn has a text limit in their captions - I believe it is 1300 characters per post.

And, for Instagram, you CANNOT use URLs in the caption - it’s recommended that you use the “Link in Bio” call to action and direct them to the URL that is showcased on your Instagram profile bio instead.

Additionally, with Instagram captions, they often get reformatted when they are published so it is highly recommended that you use a tool like IG Line Break Caption Maker. If you write your caption inside of this application, copy the text and then paste it into your Instagram post here in HootSuite or other schedulers - the paragraph breaks will remain.

It is recommended to keep your paragraph breaks because Instagram users typically do not want to read big blocks of text. Since it is an image-based platform, users want to see images primarily - not a lot of text. Users tend to scroll fairly quickly through Instagram and so there is a general tendency to scan read the captions. So make sure that your Instagram captions are easily scannable with each sentence having its own paragraph break.

For example, if you were to post an Amazon link to Facebook, the URL would be easily recognizable as an Amazon.com link and would be clickable.

If you were to post it to LinkedIn, the URL would still be clickable but would be reformatted to present as a shortened LinkedIn URL (not as an Amazon.com link).

And if you were to post to Instagram, the URL would be easily recognizable as an Amazon.com link but IS NOT clickable. Keep in mind that you can’t even highlight and/or copy and paste a link like this from an Instagram caption. The viewer would have to open a separate browser window (either on their phone or on their computer) and type out the link manually in order to access it.

OR - they could just click on your Instagram profile to access the URL that is in your profile bio section. This is why the “Link in Bio” call to action is so important on Instagram, because you want them to intentionally choose to learn more about you and your business.

So, to recap, when it comes to marketing strategies, what we’re really talking about here is intentionally and strategically developing your know, like, and trust factor so that you can inspire your audiences to buy from you and become loyal fans of your products or services.

In order to do this you need visibility and systems for maintaining that visibility.

That’s why I’ve put these 5 steps in a particular order, because they all add up to a Marketing Strategy that provides you with consistent habits of success.

Imagine what it would feel like if you could have the right systems in place to create, plan, and manage all of your marketing content? It would feel good right?

That’s what we’re aiming for here. Now, I know that there was a lot of ground covered in these podcasts, so please feel free to reach out to me if you have specific questions. Comment below, email me, or message me on social media - I’m here for you.

So next time, we’ll be going more in depth into the first step of Processes & Systems, Business Plans. I hope to interweave my personal experiences with the business lessons I learned along the way so that I can paint a full picture for you guys.

And please let me know what you think! I am always open to feedback and love connecting with my audiences.

If you want to learn more, I personally invite you to join us in the Balanced Business Leaders VIP Group Program. In as little as one hour per week, you will walk away with a clear action plan to grow and scale your business sustainably.

Please visit linktr.ee/liminalclarity for more information.

You can find the episode outline, video recording, transcript downloads, related links, etc. below.

And, until next time, love you all, take care, and I hope you have a good day wherever you are.

[music outro]

View Details

VIDEO RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/hf9GQKfSELs

RELATED LINKS:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders

https://linktr.ee/liminalclarity

https://www.liminalclarity.com/podcasts/

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone, welcome to the Balanced Business Leaders Podcast hosted by yours truly, Claire Jones, owner of Liminal Clarity. We are a business development agency that helps small business leaders scale and grow without burning out.

This is the next podcast in a series where we will be discussing the various trials and tribulations that lead me to creating my Three Pillars of Business Success, a framework that represents the foundational systems that contribute to sustainable business growth.

If you’re interested in learning more, please join us in our free Balanced Business Leaders Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders.

Ready? Alright, let’s dive in.

[musical intro]

So I started this podcast as a way to tell my story, particularly when it comes to the many, many different lessons that I have learned over the years when it comes to founding, developing, running, and growing small businesses.

This particular episode is about Content Creation, because you need to know how to craft content that is formatted ideally for each platform that you use.

So why is creating content important? Because you need to tailor your content so that it is best suited for each of the individual platforms that you’re posting to. Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, videos, or emails, there are best practices for each and, in order to maximize your impact, you need to tailor the content for each.

I didn’t realize the importance of this when I was first starting out, I thought that I could just create one piece of content and copy and paste it into every platform without changing anything.

But, if you have potential customers and clients who follow you on multiple platforms - say they follow you Instagram, Facebook, and are signed up for your email newsletter list - then, they’re going to get tired of the repetition and unfollow you on some of those platforms. Because they might think that there’s no use in following you on multiple platforms if they’re not getting any added value from those additional platforms.

How often you post on each of the platforms is also important to consider, the audiences on each of the platforms have different viewing and consumption habits from platform to platform so you can actually streamline your time by posting more strategically.

Because you don’t actually need to post on every platform every single day, so that saves you time and energy in the long run.

And, after you’ve figured out what platforms are best for your target demographic - something we talked about in a previous podcast in this series - then you can save even more time and energy by just focusing on the platforms that will provide you with the highest quality returns.

What’s the point of posting on Instagram every day if your ideal audiences aren’t even on Instagram? That’s just wasted time and effort.

So, today, I’m going to focus on the top 3 online platforms: Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn - and what kinds of content works best for each platform, starting with Facebook.

Your personal Facebook page is going to be primarily for your personal friends and family, people who are in your close network. There are some social media experts out there who advocate for using your personal profile to “friend” potential customers and clients, which works to some extent, but I find that it tends to alienate people at the end of the day. Because:

(1) You run into the issues of Facebook restrictions. Facebook really doesn’t want you doing business from your personal profiles, so they’ve actually put a limit on how often you can post business links on your personal page. The limit is 30%, so if your business posts exceed 30% of your total posts on your personal page, your personal page will be marked as spam by Facebook, and

(2) You run into the issue of people feeling spammed if you only friend them on your personal page in order to pitch to them. There’s a trend out there of people friending people who they think might be potential customers and clients, then they add them to all kinds of facebook groups, events, pages, etc. without even taking the time to talk to them and get to know them. The people who do this are only concerned about their numbers, they’re not concerned about the quality of their Facebook relationships, and it makes people feel objectified and depersonalized.

So my recommendation is that you keep your personal Facebook profile only for close friends, family, and your close networks - like people in your network groups with whom you’ve developed trusted relationships.

The content that you post on your Facebook personal profiles is going to be content about you, content that builds credibility and familiarity, content that showcases you as an imperfect, lovable, warm human being.

And you want to focus on posting to your personal Facebook profile at least once a week, if not more.

When it comes to Facebook business pages, on the other hand, this is where you provide more professional content or business-oriented content. Although, we're not focused on pitching all the time here. Think about using a 10 to 1 ratio with your content - 10 pieces of content that are educational, provide value, build your credibility, and then one piece of transactional promo. Transactional promo is basically a post that says “give me money for this thing.”

Again, we’re focused on building the know, like, and trust factor with all of our content. So use that 10 to 1 formula to make sure that people get the chance to know, like, and trust you outside of your transactional pitching, outside of your sales tactics.

When it comes to Facebook business pages versus Facebook groups, business pages are not going to get as much engagement as groups. Because when people like your business page, Facebook’s algorithm does not naturally show a lot of your business page content in their personal newsfeeds - unless they interact with your business page content consistently and continually.

Whereas with Facebook groups, group members will automatically get a notification every time something is posted to the group - unless they opt out of the group notifications. So that’s why Facebook groups get a lot more engagement than Facebook business pages - there’s a much higher chance of the group content reaching the group member’s newsfeeds than your business page content.

So think of business pages as kind of like a brochure, think of them as a website that you update every now and then. You really don't have to post there that often, maybe once or twice a week at minimum. Basically, you’re just posting on your Facebook business page to show the world that your business is still alive and kicking.

Moving onto Instagram:

Again, Instagram personal profiles are going to be for your friends and family, maybe potential clients but I highly recommend that you keep your Instagram personal profile private. Keep it kind of close to the heart and maintain it for your inner circles because you can use your Instagram business profile for all the business stuff. So I highly recommend that you keep your Instagram personal profile private and then have an Instagram business profile where you post all of your business content.

Keep in mind that Instagram is an image-based platform, so your Instagram content is typically going to have less text than your Facebook content. And for all of your content across the board, you want to include a Call to Action, which is typically an invitation to your viewers to do something after reading your post. This could be encouraging them to sign up for your newsletter list, it could be inviting them to visit your website, it could be asking them to sign up for your group program - you are calling them to take a certain action.

Also because Instagram is primarily an image-based platform, people typically don’t like to read through big blocks of text in your captions. Instagram users are usually scrolling through their feeds at a fairly rapid rate and don’t want to get slowed down by big paragraphs of text. They want to be able to scan your content easily.

So that’s why it’s highly recommended that you provide paragraph breaks between sentences in your post captions, but unfortunately Instagram does not make this easy because it will sometimes reformat your caption as you publish the post.

However, there are awesome people out there who have figured out a work around to this issue - I personally use a handy dandy tool called IG Caption Line Break Maker. If you write your caption inside of this application, copy the text and then paste it into your Instagram post - the paragraph breaks will remain. It’s a bit of fancy coding that helps out a ton. I literally use it every day.

Alright, now let’s talk about hashtags. Hashtags are highly recommended on Instagram because they expose your posts to people who aren’t following your profile. So you get much wider exposure by using hashtags. There’s a limit of 30 hashtags per post, so it is typically recommended to use all 30 when posting but I encourage you to stick to hashtags that have at least 40,000 posts associated with it.

You will see, when you’re typing out a hashtag to include on a post, it will show you how many posts are associated with that particular hashtag and if there’s only a couple hundred, then it’s probably not a highly searched hashtag. Make sense?

And, again, for all content across the board - organic engagement is super important. So the more people that like and comment on your posts, the more your post is going to show up in other people’s feeds. This is true on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. So always encourage engagement and always respond to comments on your posts.

Now, for LinkedIn, it’s going to be a lot more business-to-business focused for products and services and the upside about LinkedIn is that not a lot of people post on this platform regularly - I’ve even heard that 99% of LinkedIn users don’t post. So you’re going to be ahead of the curve if you post to Linkedin at least once a week.

Any post that you publish to LinkedIn is probably going to get more attention than posts that you publish to your Facebook business profiles, for example. Because the LinkedIn platform is a lot less saturated than the Facebook platform.

And, when it comes to personal LinkedIn profiles versus LinkedIn business pages - it’s not as important to keep these separate as it is on Facebook and Instagram. That’s because LinkedIn already has the expectation of being a professional platform, so you are going to want to keep your personal LinkedIn profile professional anyways.

However, if you have a larger company that has employees, then you will want to create a separate LinkedIn business page so that you can link all of your employee’s personal LinkedIn profiles to the business page to show that you are a robust company full of awesome people.

Just remember to keep all personal LinkedIn profiles very professional. People on LinkedIn aren't interested in seeing pictures of your dog, people aren't interested in seeing pictures of your kids, people aren't interested in your trip to the grocery store, so really keep your content on here professional and business-oriented.

Focus on sharing relevant articles or videos in your industry. It’s really more about networking versus building that know, like, and trust factor on a personal level. You’re still building a know, like, and trust factor - but you’re positioning yourself more as a trustworthy expert in your field.

And, when it comes to hashtags on LinkedIn, they’re not as valuable as on Instagram but they still make a difference in your potential exposure. So use them to some extent, but focus first and foremost, again, on organic engagement.

Always encourage likes & comments, and always respond to comments on your posts. Because the great thing about LinkedIn is that you have exposure to your connections’ networks. So if you are connected with a certain individual and they comment on your post - their connections will see their comment on your post even if they aren’t connected to you themselves. It’s a great snowball effect.

But keep in mind that you need to be very respectful of other people’s networks and connections on LinkedIn, it is highly recommended that you include some type of note when you request to connect with someone. Let them know how you found them, why you’re interested in connecting, basically give them context for your potential connection with them.

The moral of the story here is - Each platform has its own culture, just like every workplace has its own culture, so you need to get a feel for the standard norms before posting and interacting with others.

So next time, we’ll be going more in depth into the fifth step of Marketing Strategies, Content Management. I hope to interweave my personal experiences with the business lessons I learned along the way so that I can paint a full picture for you guys.

And please let me know what you think! I am always open to feedback and love connecting with my audiences.

If you want to learn more, I personally invite you to join us in the Balanced Business Leaders VIP Group Program. In as little as one hour per week, you will walk away with a clear action plan to grow and scale your business sustainably.

Please visit linktr.ee/liminalclarity for more information.

You can find the episode outline, video recording, transcript downloads, related links, etc. below.

And, until next time, love you all, take care, and I hope you have a good day wherever you are.

[music outro]

View Details

VIDEO RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/qaFHn5RxGZ0

RELATED LINKS:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders

https://linktr.ee/liminalclarity

https://www.liminalclarity.com/podcasts/

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone, welcome to the Balanced Business Leaders Podcast hosted by yours truly, Claire Jones, owner of Liminal Clarity. We are a business development agency that helps small business leaders scale and grow without burning out.

This is the next podcast in a series where we will be discussing the various trials and tribulations that lead me to creating my Three Pillars of Business Success, a framework that represents the foundational systems that contribute to sustainable business growth.

If you’re interested in learning more, please join us in our free Balanced Business Leaders Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders.

Ready? Alright, let’s dive in.

[musical intro]

So I started this podcast as a way to tell my story, particularly when it comes to the many, many different lessons that I have learned over the years when it comes to founding, developing, running, and growing small businesses.

This particular episode is about Touchpoints, because you need to know how often you should interact with your potential customers.

So why are touchpoints important? Like we covered in previous episodes, when it comes to marketing strategies, what we’re talking about here is intentionally and strategically building your know, like, and trust factor with your audiences.

So now that we’ve figured out which marketing platforms to use for your business and how to optimize your digital presence with your website and google my business profile - the question is - now what?

How do you strategically build that know, like, and trust factor with these platforms? By consistently generating multiple touchpoints with your potential customers and clients.

A lot of people think that if they just build a website, or open up a brick and mortar - customers will show up. I’ve definitely fallen into this trap before, with my first business that was a general store devoted to local goods.

I set up the website, I set up the brick and mortar space, put my sign out front on the sidewalk and waited for the masses to come. But, guess what? They didn’t.

I had the cart but I didn’t have the horse. Sure, I got a few sales from people who just happened to wander upon my store - either online or in person. But it wasn’t consistent and it definitely wasn’t enough to keep my business open.

It wasn’t until I started seeking out business advisors that they told me about this thing called networking. I was like, what do you mean I have to go talk to people? What do you mean I need social support circles?

I was an only child of divorced parents, living thousands of miles away from home - I had always done things by myself so I hadn’t yet learned that I needed to develop relationships in order to help my business succeed.

That’s the importance of touchpoints, right there. You need to give people multiple chances so that they can grow to know, like, and trust you. Because at the end of the day, it’s not a sales funnel - it’s a trust funnel.

The most common rule of thumb when it comes to the number of touchpoints you need in order to engage a customer is around 16 touchpoints.

As a rule of thumb, it’s a pretty solid rule of thumb but I believe, like most generalizations, that it leaves the valuable nuances unexplored.

So, if you want a little more depth and a little more strategy, I invite you to check out Jeb Blount’s book Fanatical Prospecting.

It's a great book if you haven't checked it out already, it has some really juicy information about how to consistently, strategically, and intentionally build relationships with your audiences. He comes from a traditional corporate sales background, so he is most familiar with sales call centers, insurance sales, software sales, stuff like that.

But I think his advice is very useful for businesses of all sizes and in all fields because what we're really looking at here is how do you build that know, like, and trust factor over time with your audiences.

Like I’ve said before, people are going to buy from people that they know, like, and trust. We're in a day and age now with marketing where it’s highly unlikely that you’re showing up on the market with a completely new product or a new idea.

Most of the time, you’re going to have both direct and indirect competitors. So why is your customer going to buy from you? Because they know, like, and trust you.

And generating touchpoints is a great way to strategically and intentionally build those relationships - build that know, like, and trust factor.

Jeb Blount has done a lot of research on this and he has figured out how many touchpoints it takes to engage various customers and so, for example -

If you are engaging a cold prospect (someone who doesn't know who you are, doesn't know your brand, doesn’t know anything about your business, your products, or your services), you need to create 20 to 50 touchpoints before they will engage with your products or services.

And touchpoints can be anything from commenting on their Facebook posts, to meeting them at a networking event, to sending them an email, to talking to them on the phone. And you need a lot of touchpoints because they need to grow to know, like, and trust you.

So if you’re consistently interacting with them every other day, for example, it’s going to take up to 100 days to engage a cold prospect. That’s the power of having a consistent and deliberate touchpoint strategy.

You have to be prepared to have a long build-up cycle in order to engage clients.

If you are engaging with a prospect who has a little bit of familiarity with you and your brand (maybe they’ve seen a couple of your posts here and there, maybe they saw an ad once), then it takes 5 to 20 touch points. And that's when it's buying window dependent, meaning that they may or may not be in the buying window and may or may not be actively looking around for a product or service similar to what you offer.

Even if you have a warm inbound lead, this means that people know, like, and trust you enough to come to you and ask about your services or products, it still takes 5 to 12 touch points in order to engage them.

This means that they are actively seeking out you and your products or services. They are interested in your offerings enough to come and ask you about them - but it still takes 5 to 12 touch points in order to engage them.

Narrowing down even further, it takes 3 to 10 touches to engage a prospect who has a high degree of familiarity with you or your brand, but is NOT in the buying window. That’s the power of branding.

This means that the prospective customer has already grown to know, like, and trust you - they have a high degree of familiarity with you and your brand BUT they’re just not buying right now.

Even if they’re not interested in buying from you at the moment, it still takes less touchpoints to engage them (on average) than it would take to engage a warm inbound lead - someone who is actively asking you about your products or services (who is presumably already in the buying window) but is not as highly familiar with you.

That’s the wild thing about marketing - People will go to great lengths to support and buy from the people that they know, like, and trust. We’re all human, we’re evolutionarily wired for social connection and our brains just prefer the people that we already know, like, and trust.

Because once you jump up to a potential customer who both has a high degree of familiarity with your brand AND is in the buying window, it only takes 1 to 5 touchpoints to engage them.

This means that they may be already looking for options. They've already done a few searches online, they’ve already gone to a few stores, they've already talked to a few people. They are looking for what kinds of options are out there and they are actively looking to buy a solution for their problem.

PLUS they are also highly familiar with you and your business already. They already know, like, and trust you. Maybe they follow you on Instagram, maybe they follow you on Facebook, maybe they’re signed up for your newsletter, maybe you see them often at networking events or at your kids’ soccer practice.

Whatever the touchpoints are - they already know what your business offers AND they are in the buying window actively looking for solutions similar to what you offer. In this case, it takes 1 to 5 touchpoints to engage them.

So you really need to keep in mind how many times you need to interact with your audiences in order to build that know, like, and trust factor. Basically, how can you go about this strategically?

So it might take a while to build these relationships: you are building trust, you are building credibility, and it's all about how you can create a relationship with them. Because there are so many options out there nowadays for products and services, chances are you’re not the only one who offers what you’re offering. So why is the potential customer going to choose you? Because they know, like, and trust you.

And, finally, in order to re-engage an inactive customer, someone who has already bought from you in the past, it takes 1 to 3 touches. Maybe they bought from you three months ago, maybe they bought from you five years ago, it still takes 1 to 3 touchpoints (on average) in order to re-engage them.

So what do these touchpoints look like? It can look like email campaigns, newsletters, phone calls - maybe you want to call them and check in on how they're doing. Maybe you want to send them a follow up email to ask for a product or service review, find out how they're liking the product that they bought from you - maybe find out if they want more.

If you are selling a physical product, maybe like a face wash or some other type of disposable, personal use product, then you might want to follow up with them after a month to ask if they’d like to reorder since it’s likely that they’ve used up what they had. And this can easily be done with automated email campaigns sent through your ecommerce store, there are several softwares that will do this for you.

You can also comment on their Facebook groups, you can comment on their Facebook pages, you can follow them on Instagram and like and comment on their stuff if you have a closer relationship with your customers.

Or you can meet them at a networking event - there's a lot of different ways you can create a touchpoint with those inactive customers and re-engage them.

You can even send them follow up gifts using snail mail. For example, Bed Bath & Beyond is actually great at this. I know you’ve seen their 20% off coupons that they mail out on a regular basis to past customers. How many times have you created a random trip to Bed, Bath & Beyond just because you got those coupons in the mail?

That’s a perfect example of a touchpoint for an inactive customer because this is actually the easiest level of touch point. Typically, if they’ve been a customer in the past, you already have their information. You have their phone number, their email, their address - so it's really easy to create these touch points with inactive customers.

So this is the type of strategy that you can keep in mind when you're approaching your marketing efforts and it typically takes a while to build these relationships. That's why I think of marketing as more of building relationships with people, building familiarity, because they want to know, like and trust you before they buy.

So next time, we’ll be going more in depth into the fourth step of Marketing Strategies, Content Creation. I hope to interweave my personal experiences with the business lessons I learned along the way so that I can paint a full picture for you guys.

And please let me know what you think! I am always open to feedback and love connecting with my audiences.

If you want to learn more, I personally invite you to join us in the Balanced Business Leaders VIP Group Program. In as little as one hour per week, you will walk away with a clear action plan to grow and scale your business sustainably.

Please visit linktr.ee/liminalclarity for more information.

You can find the episode outline, video recording, transcript downloads, related links, etc. below.

And, until next time, love you all, take care, and I hope you have a good day wherever you are.

[music outro]

View Details

VIDEO RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/rsRIjbZiXoI

RELATED LINKS:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders

https://linktr.ee/liminalclarity

https://www.liminalclarity.com/podcasts/

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone, welcome to the Balanced Business Leaders Podcast hosted by yours truly, Claire Jones, owner of Liminal Clarity. We are a business development agency that helps small business leaders scale and grow without burning out.

This is the next podcast in a series where we will be discussing the various trials and tribulations that lead me to creating my Three Pillars of Business Success, a framework that represents the foundational systems that contribute to sustainable business growth.

If you’re interested in learning more, please join us in our free Balanced Business Leaders Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders.

Ready? Alright, let’s dive in.

[musical intro]

So I started this podcast as a way to tell my story, particularly when it comes to the many, many different lessons that I have learned over the years when it comes to founding, developing, running, and growing small businesses.

This particular episode is about Websites & Google My Business, because you need to take control over how you and your business are showing up online.

A lot of small business builders tend to be intimidated by these two things, mainly because they are preconditioned to think that it is complicated and takes a lot of time to master. It’s something that exists in the “discomfort zone” for many people.

And that perspective is definitely valid, because for many, many years, this kind of stuff was complicated, it was obscure, and it did require a lot of specialized knowledge. But nowadays, technology has advanced to such a point that it’s now easier than it ever was before.

Unfortunately, however, there are a lot of web professionals out there who would rather keep business leaders in the dark - because they can profit from your ignorance.

I’ve seen too many people get screwed over by overpriced, under-delivered web services - and that unfortunately seems to be the norm. But I’m here to change that. I’m here to educate you so that you can make informed decisions moving forward, so that you can actually save time and money while building your dream business.

There are a lot of softwares and platforms out there nowadays that will pretty much do the work for you and as long as you know where to go and what button to press it's going to be pretty easy.

This is actually one of the services that I offer for a lot of clients when they're focusing on their marketing strategies, I help them look at all of the different options to make sure that their websites are optimized for their needs and set up in a way that doesn't cause customers and visitors to bounce off their sites without buying something from them or inquiring about their services.

Now, you may be asking - how does she know so much about websites?

Well, I’ve created, edited, updated, and maintained a lot of different websites on a lot of different platforms over the years. That’s the thing about small businesses, you kinda need to learn a lot of different things and wear a lot of different hats.

Fortunately, I grew up as part of one of the first generations that had computer classes starting in Kindergarten.

At age 5 or so, I remember sitting in front of an ancient computer that only had the black screens with the green text and printing things out on dot matrix printer. Remember those?

Then, as time went on and technology progressed, I learned all of the different operating systems and learned all of the different softwares that were used by the various businesses I worked for.

Over the years I’ve used databases like Access, LineWatch, The Museum System, ProVenue, and TextAid. I built and edited websites on Yahoo, Wordpress, Shopify, and WebFlow. I’ve used softwares like MailChimp, Basecamp, Quickbooks, Airtable, Asana, Adobe, Hootsuite, Canva, JotForm, Calendly, Nimble, Vend, the Microsoft Suite, and - my absolute favorite - the entire Google Suite of applications.

So I’ve had a lot of experience poking around on new platforms and I usually have a good idea of how to interact with and use most software applications

And what I’ve found over the years is that it’s not exactly rocket science, but you do need to engage your critical thinking skills when comparing and contrasting the various technologies that you can use in your business.

Alright, let’s dive in…

So there are three different routes to take when creating a website.

Route #1 would be DIYing it and setting up your own domain hosting and website platform. Don’t worry though, this is often easier than it sounds.

Route #2 would be half DIY/half automated. These are platforms that give you lots of customization abilities but also provide you with robust reporting, inventory management, and backend features.

And then Route #3 is paying someone else to do it. Often, people don’t know what to look for when they’re deciding who to hire so I will also talk about my preferences and what features to ask about.

When it comes to Route #1, there are multiple domain hosts that you can use for this. Some of the more popular ones are GoDaddy, DreamHost, BlueHost, or HostGator.

But I’m a fan of GreenGeeks in particular because, not only are they easy to work with and offer great features for low prices, but they are also a carbon-neutral company (that's why they're called GreenGeeks).

They even have a setup system that works directly with WordPress and so it's very easy to set up a simple website hosted this way.

For Route #2, there is also a whole range of platforms to choose from - from Wix, to Squarespace, to Weebly - there are a ton of them. My personal favorite is Shopify.

Shopify will actually register your domain for you as well so you don't even need to go through a domain host like GreenGeeks. Just buy your domain through Shopify and the basic pricing I think it's around $30 a month for the site and $14 per year for the domain.

This platform is basically an all-in-one eCommerce option that combines:
Website layout themes (free and paid)
inventory management,
marketing integrations, like email campaigns and social media ads
in-person POS (point of sale) systems with card swipers,
Various reporting and analytic capabilities,
customizable invoices

All kinds of different stuff, and I just really like the support they offer as well. There’s a huge library of helpful blogs and how-to articles as well as support via online chat or phone. And I really like the reports that they give you on the back end so that's why I prefer Shopify personally as the eCommerce platform.

And then, for Route #3, which are done-for-you web development services - again - there are a ton of different options. My personal favorite is Cosmital - C O S M I T A L.

Cosmital is an all-in-one web design service and they do 18 month contracts. So most web designers will make you pay a lump sum up front, anywhere from $1,500 to $10,000 depending on how complicated the website is.

Cosmital, on the other hand, will charge you a monthly fee for an 18 month contract and so, depending on how complicated your web site is, you will be paying $50 per month for a basic site, $80 per month for an eCommerce site, and $80 per month plus other fees if you want something more complex.

So, for the full 18 month contract, that’s a total of $900, $1,440, or $1,440 plus additional fees (respectively). And they will do maintenance for you throughout the term of the contract, so you get continued support and can update your site whenever you want during those 18 months.

After the 18 months are up, you can either decide to stay with them for another contract period or they will transfer the ownership of the site over to you.

So, when you start working with them, you will talk about layout options, gather images and materials, and then they will create a mock-up site for you. After that is approved, they will do periodic maintenance for you throughout the 18 month contract.

Most website designers are going to charge you a minimum of $1500, so this is actually going to be a discount if you don't want to do anything yourself. My website is currently hosted through them and I love it.

Next, when it comes to your Google My Business profile, this is the information that will show up on the right hand side of a Google search - including your website, hours, location, menus, products, videos, reviews, anything you choose to feature.

It’s like your business listing in the phonebook but now it’s Google because Google pretty much controls everything nowadays.

If this is not optimized, your audiences are going to get confused because they’re not finding the information that they’re looking for. You will miss out on a lot of business opportunities this way.

Google is the number one search engine in the world right now, there are 5.6 billion searches a day! How can you afford to not use these tools that are available to you?

Remember, this is all about how to set up your digital presence so that it showcases an accurate and well-executed public image for your business.

Your marketing platforms - like social media, websites, and search engine listings - are the infrastructures that will support, host, and distribute your daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly marketing activities. The infrastructures come first, because the content we generate needs to be formatted for those infrastructures - if you create the content first, it’s like putting the horse before the cart.

Your marketing platforms, website, and google profile are the cart. Whereas your marketing content is the horse.

And you have to have both:

If you only have the infrastructures, the cart just sits there with no forward momentum. Your business will sit like a dusty sign, waiting to be stumbled upon.

If you only have marketing content, the horse isn’t anchored to anything. Your audiences won’t have context for what you’re telling them, they won’t know what to do with the information you’re providing.

Is this tracking with you guys?

Alright, so next time comes Touchpoints - because you need to know how often you will need to produce and/or engage in the marketing activities that bring exposure to your business. You need to know how many touchpoints, emails, social media posts, ads, phone calls, networking coffees, etc. are going to engage your audiences and compel them to buy your products and services.

I hope to interweave my personal experiences with the business lessons I learned along the way so that I can paint a full picture for you guys.

And please let me know what you think! I am always open to feedback and love connecting with my audiences.

If you want to learn more, I personally invite you to join us in the Balanced Business Leaders VIP Group Program. In as little as one hour per week, you will walk away with a clear action plan to grow and scale your business sustainably.

Please visit linktr.ee/liminalclarity for more information.

You can find the episode outline, video recording, transcript downloads, related links, etc. below.

And, until next time, love you all, take care, and I hope you have a good day wherever you are.

[music outro]

View Details

VIDEO RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/_yYrRCPD5Dc

RELATED LINKS:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders

https://linktr.ee/liminalclarity

https://www.liminalclarity.com/podcasts/

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone, welcome to the Balanced Business Leaders Podcast hosted by yours truly, Claire Jones, owner of Liminal Clarity. We are a business development agency that helps small business leaders scale and grow without burning out.

This is the next podcast in a series where we will be discussing the various trials and tribulations that lead me to creating my Three Pillars of Business Success, a framework that represents the foundational systems that contribute to sustainable business growth.

If you’re interested in learning more, please join us in our free Balanced Business Leaders Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders.

Ready? Alright, let’s dive in.

[musical intro]

So I started this podcast as a way to tell my story, particularly when it comes to the many, many different lessons that I have learned over the years when it comes to founding, developing, running, and growing small businesses.

This particular episode is about Platforms & Demographics, because you need to choose the right platforms that will strategically target your ideal audiences.

When I was starting out in my first business, I didn’t really realize how important Marketing was. I mean I knew it was part of running a business, but I naively thought that if I just provided a great product or service and started to put my business out there then customers would come.

You know the phrase - “build it and they will come”? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

What I didn’t realize was that there was an emotional aspect to engaging customers, people have to grow to know, like, and trust you before they are willing to buy from you.

And I didn’t realize how much consistent relationship building was required in order to do that.

I spent a lot of my time optimizing my website, making sure I had great products, figuring out how to do product photography, learning graphic design, and all this stuff that does contribute to a profitable business in some ways but I wasn’t spending much time actually talking to people.

I felt like I was busy, because I was doing tons of things day in and day out. I always had things on my list to learn and improve and optimize, but what was I actually accomplishing?

Not sales, that was obvious.

I wasn’t spending much time building relationships, if at all. I wasn’t giving people the chance to know, like, and trust me. Instead, I was spending my time working 60 hours a week by myself in a white box surrounded by inventory I couldn’t sell. It was rough, let me tell you.

When it comes to marketing strategies, what we’re talking about here is intentionally and strategically building your know, like, and trust factor with your audiences. Because there are so many options out there nowadays for products and services, chances are you’re not the only one who offers what you’re offering.

You’re always going to have competitors. There are probably at least a dozen other businesses out there who are offering the same (if not very similar) products and services that you do. So why is the potential customer going to choose you?

You might be the cheapest option, you might be the scientifically-proven option, you might be the longest-lasting option, but at the end of the day they’re going to choose you over everyone else because they know, like, and trust you - not because your product or service has the best features.

It’s irrational, I know, you’d think that people would make rational decisions about what products or services provide them with the biggest benefits. But that’s not the way our brains work.

People will go to great lengths to support and buy from the people that they know, like, and trust. We’re all human, we’re evolutionarily wired for social connection and our brains just prefer the people that we know, like, and trust.

So how can you intentionally and strategically use that to make sales?

Alright so - when you're approaching Marketing Strategies, I always recommend that people start by thinking about (1) who your ideal clients are, and (2) where they’re hanging out.

So #1 - Who is your ideal client?

Have you taken the time to figure out who exactly you’re targeting with your products or services?

You need to document and describe your target customer. (This is also known as the ideal customer or buyer persona.)

Create a demographic profile for each group that includes:

For consumers, their:

Age
Gender
Location
Income
Occupation
Education level

For businesses, their:

Industry
Location
Size
Stage in business (startup, growing, mature)
Annual sales

You also need to create a psychographic profile for each group, these are the feelings, the frustrations, the pains, the hopes, and the dreams that the target customer is coming to you with.

This is super important for marketing messaging, you need to be able to communicate to your customers that you understand their pains or problems and that, because you understand, you have the ideal solution for them.

This is where the importance of market research interviews come in. I highly recommend that everyone spends time interviewing people who they think may fit their ideal customer profile.

Ask them about:
What specific problems or issues they are experiencing
What specific pain points are obstacles in their lives or businesses
What are their feelings about those issues or pain points
What kind of impact are those issues or paint points having on their lives or businesses
What are their goals
What solutions have they tried and what worked and what didn’t
What solutions are they looking for
Where do they look for solutions

If you can gather this type of data from multiple people who may fit your ideal customer profiles, then you will have the exact wording and verbiage that you can use in your marketing messaging to directly target those ideal customers.

Basically, you’re looking to give potential customers the sensation that you can read their mind. If you use their exact phrasing, their exact words, that they use to describe their issues and how they want to solve those issues - you will seem like a mind reader.

But you can only do that if you take the time to identify your ideal customer profiles in the first place.

So then #2 is figuring out where they’re hanging out.

After asking your market research interview questions, you will also know where to find these ideal customers. Literally ask them, where do you look for solutions to your pain points?

Do they ask friends? Do they search Google? Do they go to networking events? Do they go to Facebook groups? Do they search hashtags on Instagram?

Where are they hanging out already so that you can hang out there too and have a higher chance of reaching them?

Basically, what platforms are they visiting every day?

So really think about who your ideal client is, where they are already hanging out, and focus your efforts there first and foremost.

Also, when you're marketing, you are not pitching - first and foremost. Sure, you can offer a pitch every now and then to let people know what your services or products are and how they can access them but your primary goal when marketing is to connect, interact, and teach.

You are building familiarity, you are building credibility as an expert, you are giving them value, you are intentionally creating that know, like, and trust factor. So how can you create value for your potential clients, how can you create value for your audience in a way that they're like, “huh, I want to learn more about this person or company because they seem to know a lot”?

How can you anchor that familiarity, anchor yourself as an expert, and provide content that is valuable and educates your audiences?

When we’re talking about how people interact with marketing sources, there’s a survey done by a global online consumer survey company - the Nielson Group - and they say that “recommendations from people I know” is the number one most trusted marketing source.

That means, when it comes to reaching your audiences, 82% of consumers would trust opinions from people they know. This is where word of mouth comes in. Word of mouth and referrals are considered king in the marketing world.

This is also why organic engagement - as opposed to paid engagement - on social media is so important because people see what their friends are engaging with and if they see that a friend knows, likes, trusts, and engages with a particular brand they're much more likely to know, like, and trust that brand too. It’s just what our brains do.
When it comes to what platforms to choose based on demographics, research shows that:

If your target demographic has people over 30, you're going to be better off on Facebook; but if your target demographic is under 30, you're going to be better off on Instagram.

Or if you're a business-to-business kind of company, where you work more with small business owners or corporations, Linkedin is probably going to be your best bet.

Or if you're helping the more elderly market and offering senior care services or stuff like that, you might want to consider doing snail mail as your primary marketing effort. Because a lot of them aren't on Facebook, a lot of them aren't on Instagram.

YouTube, on the other hand, is best used for broad exposure because it is the second largest search engine (under Google at #1) and will soon be the most used search engine in the world.

Twitter is best used for celebrities, comedians, politicians, authors, speakers, and thought leaders. Basically, if you have strong opinions that you want to broadcast, Twitter is the place for you.

And Pinterest is best used for aesthetically pleasing product-based businesses. Pinterest is the third largest search engine coming under YouTube and 83% of weekly Pinterest users have made a purchase based on content they saw from brands on Pinterest.

The overall point here is to keep in mind that not all marketing platforms are going to be fruitful for your business, so take the time to intentionally choose where you are directing your marketing efforts to make the biggest impact.

So next time, we’ll be going more in depth into the second step of Marketing Strategies, Websites & Google My Business. I hope to interweave my personal experiences with the business lessons I learned along the way so that I can paint a full picture for you guys.

And please let me know what you think! I am always open to feedback and love connecting with my audiences.

If you want to learn more, I personally invite you to join us in the Balanced Business Leaders VIP Group Program. In as little as one hour per week, you will walk away with a clear action plan to grow and scale your business sustainably.

Please visit linktr.ee/liminalclarity for more information.

You can find the episode outline, video recording, transcript downloads, related links, etc. below.

And, until next time, love you all, take care, and I hope you have a good day wherever you are.

[music outro]

View Details

VIDEO RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/NIrFuPU9WyM

RELATED LINKS:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders

https://linktr.ee/liminalclarity

https://www.liminalclarity.com/podcasts/

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone, welcome to the Balanced Business Leaders Podcast hosted by yours truly, Claire Jones, owner of Liminal Clarity. We are a business development agency that helps small business leaders scale and grow without burning out.

This is the next podcast in a series where we will be discussing the various trials and tribulations that lead me to creating my Three Pillars of Business Success, a framework that represents the foundational systems that contribute to sustainable business growth.

If you’re interested in learning more, please join us in our free Balanced Business Leaders Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders.

Ready? Alright, let’s dive in.

[musical intro]

So I started this podcast as a way to tell my story, particularly when it comes to the many, many different lessons that I have learned over the years when it comes to founding, developing, running, and growing small businesses.

And this particular episode is about introducing the 5 steps to creating effective Marketing Strategies.

Why is this the second pillar to achieving long-term, sustainable business success?

Because you need to intentionally and strategically go after marketing opportunities that will help you reach your ideal audiences and do it with intentional forethought instead of impulsive reaction. With effective marketing strategies, we’re focusing on quality ROI (return on investment) instead of quantity ROI - thereby saving you time, money, and energy.

This is something that I'm really passionate about because, like many small business leaders, I didn’t know what I was doing when I opened up my first business seven years ago. I knew that it was an integral part of running a business but I didn’t know much beyond what I saw other companies doing - you know, ads, social media posts, billboards, maybe some press.

But, thankfully, I had my research skills to fall back on so I dove into any marketing book, blog, or resource I could find. I talked to professionals, mentors, advisors, and other business owners.

It took years of reading, listening, and trial & error to figure out the overall patterns, the foundational themes that contributed to successful marketing efforts.

And what I found was that it all boiled down to an intentional and strategic development of the know, like, and trust factor with your audiences.

According to the American Marketing Association: “Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relations in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders.”

Core to this definition are activities which foster the exchange of value between people. This makes marketing an inherently social phenomenon based on managing relationships.

It’s not about managing sales transactions primarily, it’s about managing that know, like, and trust factor. Your overall business goal should be creating satisfied customers. Always put the customer first, not the product.

Keep this theme in mind as we go through the rest of these podcasts, because you will see time and time again that you need to be able to understand the customer’s point of view in order to create quality ROI - return on investment - with your marketing efforts.

So when it comes to marketing strategies, what we’re really talking about here is intentionally and strategically developing your know, like, and trust factor so that you can inspire your audiences to buy from you and become loyal fans of your products or services.

In order to do this you need visibility and systems for maintaining that visibility.

Your Marketing Strategies journey is going to start with figuring out what marketing platforms are going to be best for you and your business so that you can intentionally target your ideal audiences. There is no cookie cutter solution for this - it is directly linked to who, specifically, would be most interested in your products or services and figuring out where they would be best reached.

And how do you do that?

By figuring out your ideal client demographics and psychographics. This means doing market research to figure out:

For consumers, their:

Age
Gender
Location
Income
Occupation
Education level

For businesses, their:

Industry
Location
Size
Stage in business (startup, growing, mature)
Annual sales

You also need to create a psychographic profile for each group: these are the feelings, the frustrations, the pains, the hopes, and the dreams that the target customer is coming to you with.

This is super important for marketing messaging, you need to be able to communicate to your customers that you understand their pains or goals and that, because you understand those, you have the ideal solution for them.

Then, we will go over Websites & Google My Business so that you need to take control over your digital presence. These two things are more important than a brick and mortar location nowadays, people are always going to look you up online so you might as well lean into it.

These digital platforms are basically your phone book listings. Phone books are pretty much obsolete nowadays and your audiences are always going to check you out online to see if you’re a trusted, established business.

You can DIY your website, pay someone else to do it, or some mix of the two - the point is to know the basics of how you want your website to work and what features are needed to achieve that.

For your Google My Business profile, you will miss out on a lot of business opportunities if this is not optimized. Google is the number one search engine in the world right now, there are 5.6 billion searches a day! How can you afford to not use these tools that are available to you?

Then, we will figure out how many times you need to have contact with your potential customers in order to engage them with your products or services. This will directly influence your content strategies, consistency is king here.

Because you need to give your audiences numerous chances to get to know, like, and trust you as a business. And research has shown that it takes a surprising amount of touchpoints in order to engage potential customers or clients.

For example, did you know that it takes up to 50 touchpoints in order to engage a cold prospect? That means someone who has no idea who you are, no idea what you offer, no idea that you exist. It takes 50 pieces of content, 50 phone calls, 50 emails, or 50 Facebook comments in order to develop that know, like, and trust factor with them.

That leads into Content Creation, and learning what kind of content is going to be ideal for the marketing platforms that you’ve chosen to use in order to reach your ideal audiences. Because we don’t want to waste time by making content for platforms that aren’t going to reach the people we want to reach.

Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, videos, or emails, there are best practices for each and, in order to maximize your impact, you need to tailor the content for each.

When you're creating all of this content, keep in mind that you have a specific purpose for the content. Each piece of content should only speak to:
One topic/area of focus
One point/goal/Call to Action
One audience member

Speak to that one ideal client that you identified in the first step of Marketing Strategies and make it very clear that this content is specifically for them.

And, finally, we wrap it all up with Content Management. When you know where you’re going to market, how often you’re going to market, and what content you’re going to market with - you will then need some systems and infrastructures to help organize it all and keep you on track.

This is often the part where people get overwhelmed. They have an idea of where they’re supposed to be posting, they have some ideas for what they’re supposed to be posting about, but they’re suddenly overwhelmed by how often they need to post and the sheer amount of content they need to create and manage in order to develop those consistent touchpoints with their audiences.

That’s okay - remember that you’re not alone.

This is where Content Management structures come in so that they do all of the tracking for you.

There are two systems that are recommended here: Content Calendars and Content Schedulers.

Content Calendars are going to track what content you plan on posting, on what platform, on what day, and in what order. This way, you can plan out your content in advance, so when the time comes to actually make and post the content - you’re not wasting time trying to figure out what the content is supposed to be.

Think of it as your past self taking care of your future self. Your past self is going to take some time planning out your content so that your future self doesn’t have to make any decisions when the time comes, they just have to do the things.

And Content Schedulers are going to automate all of this wonderful content that you’ve now planned out.

These tools allow you to basically keep track of what all your profiles are doing in one location. This prevents the time suck that is switching between all of the different platforms in order to post, review, engage, etc.

I’ll go more in depth about these later, but, for now, just keep in mind that all of these 5 steps lead into the next. They are in a certain order for a reason.

They all add up to a Marketing Strategy that provides you with consistent habits of success.

Imagine what it would feel like if you could have the right systems in place to create, plan, and manage all of your marketing content? It would feel good right?

That’s what we’re aiming for here.

I know it’s hard to resist the urge to jump ahead and start churning out content, but you’re going to save yourself a lot of time, money, and energy if you follow the steps in order. Believe me, I’ve done it the hard way before and it’s not fun folks.

So next time, we’ll be going more in depth into the first step of Marketing Strategies, Platforms & Demographics. I hope to interweave my personal experiences with the business lessons I learned along the way so that I can paint a full picture for you guys.

And please let me know what you think! I am always open to feedback and love connecting with my audiences.

If you want to learn more, I personally invite you to join us in the Balanced Business Leaders VIP Group Program. In as little as one hour per week, you will walk away with a clear action plan to grow and scale your business sustainably.

Please visit linktr.ee/liminalclarity for more information.

You can find the episode outline, video recording, transcript downloads, related links, etc. below.

And, until next time, love you all, take care, and I hope you have a good day wherever you are.

[music outro]

View Details

VIDEO RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/ghaNVHFVDsw

RELATED LINKS:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders

https://linktr.ee/liminalclarity

https://www.liminalclarity.com/podcasts/

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone, welcome to the Balanced Business Leaders Podcast hosted by yours truly, Claire Jones, owner of Liminal Clarity. We are a business development agency that helps small business leaders scale and grow without burning out.

This is the next podcast in a series where we will be discussing the various trials and tribulations that lead me to creating my Three Pillars of Business Success, a framework that represents the foundational systems that contribute to sustainable business growth.

If you’re interested in learning more, please join us in our free Balanced Business Leaders Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders.

Ready? Alright, let’s dive in.

[musical intro]

So I started this podcast as a way to tell my story, particularly when it comes to the many, many different lessons that I have learned over the years when it comes to founding, developing, running, and growing small businesses.

This particular episode is about Coaching Habits, which represent the fifth step in creating a Sustainable Schedule for yourself as a busy small business leader.

Coaching the people you are working with is an important aspect of Sustainable Schedules because, again, we all have our personal limits. BUT we also all have our personal geniuses.

And when you coach people, instead of just telling them what to do, you get the chance to tap into the inner brilliance of the people around you.

If you could surround yourself with people who are all working within their zone of genius, can you imagine what a total powerhouse your business would be???

Everyone around you knows something you don’t. Everyone around you has experiences, skill sets, and knowledge sets that you don’t.

And in the coaching industry, professionally trained coaches believe that everyone is the expert in their own life. They know their lives best and they are the ones who are best able to come up with solutions, behaviors, opinions, or habits that align most with their inner guidance system.

So your Sustainable Schedule journey started with scheduling your time in a way that enhances your own brain functioning by prioritizing the 7 areas of the Healthy Mind Platter.

Then, you used Flexible Time Blocking to make sure that you stay on track and keep yourself accountable to your new schedule.

Then, you tapped into Self Regulation techniques to effectively manage your emotional experience of your new schedule, thereby empowering yourself with a sense of control.

Then, you started Delegating the tasks or activities that aren’t in your zone of genius.

And, finally, you want to Coach the people around you so that they are better able to tap into their own zones of genius.

All of this adds up to a schedule where everyone involved is producing their best work, because they are primed for optimal brain functioning, they are accountable and in control of their experiences, and they are kicking ass with their own unique skill sets.

That’s the formula for sustained long term success, right there.

Imagine if you and the people around you were consistently and intentionally energized, productive, and happy… how would that impact your business and your life?

Alright, so before I jump the gun here, let’s get into the nitty gritty when it comes to coaching the people around you.

You can do this for yourself, you can do this in your community groups, you can do this in your workplaces, you can even do this in your family - basically anywhere you're interacting with people in a social context and working together towards a common goal.

Coaching has actually been shown to have a markedly positive impact on performance, culture, and the bottom line. And this is because, when you tap into other people’s inner brilliance, they are more intrinsically motivated, they are more energized, they are more productive, they make better decisions, they are more innovative, more creative, and basically happier overall.

And developing a Coaching Habit doesn’t have to be that hard really. It should be a daily informal act not an occasional formal event that only happens a couple times a year.

So today I’m going to provide you with some coaching questions that will help you bring the best out of yourself and your team members.

Number one is: What is on your mind?

This really helps target the topic of the challenge or issue. Maybe they have a people problem, maybe they have a project problem, or maybe they have a behavior pattern problem. So this question really identifies what exactly the challenge is and what approach this person wants to take toward that challenge. This question sets the stage right off the bat.

Number two is: And what else?

There are three reasons this question has the impact that it does: (1) more options can lead to better decisions; (2) you rein in your advice monster; and (3) you buy yourself time.

So by asking them to further this topic that they brought up in the first question, you can really get them to think about the solutions rather than you telling them what the solutions are. You need to remember that the first answer someone gives you is almost never the only answer and it's rarely the best answer so you can really dive into what the other options are with this question and you can tame the advice monster.

Plus it empowers your team members to think for themselves and come up with solutions that are more aligned with their own inner guidance systems.

Number three is: So what's the real challenge here for you?

This is where you're really getting into the nitty-gritty. This is where you can really identify what the problem is at hand because the first problem that they bring you often is a surface problem - it's usually a symptom of an underlying cause.

So this helps avoid several things: (1) you avoid working on the wrong problem, (2) you avoid doing the work that your team should be doing, and (3) you avoid a situation where the work doesn’t get done at all.

Number four is: What do you want?

This is basically how to be a grown-up. This creates an adult-to-adult relationship in which people are able to ask for exactly what they want, knowing that the answer might be no.

It’s often hard to ask for what you want, even if you know what you want. So this gives them an opportunity to cut through the fog and be courageous enough to ask for what they want out of this challenge.

Number five is: How can I help?

Now that you know what the real challenge is and exactly what this person wants, now you can ask what kind of support they want from you.

Again, this removes the responsibility to interpret what their ask means for you. Because, at this point, you may be tempted to offer a lot of stuff that's not actually helpful to them. Sometimes people are just looking for someone to listen, sometimes they’re looking for advice, and sometimes they’re looking for you to step in and do something.

So save yourself the time and energy that it takes to guess what they want from you and just ask.

Number six is: If you are saying yes to this, what are you saying no to?

So let's be clear here, what exactly are you saying yes to and what are you saying no to in order to get this done? A yes is nothing without a no, because it gives the yes boundaries. Understanding this helps identify the implications of the decision - that's really what we're talking about here.

What options are automatically eliminated by saying yes to this? If you say yes to this meeting, for example, then you are saying no to something else that is happening at the same time as the meeting.

And what options are you committing to by saying this? It's what you now need to commit to doing in order to make the yes happen. It's all too easy to shove another yes into the bag of our overcommitted lives, hoping that in some magical sort of way it will somehow all be accommodated.

And, finally, number seven is: What was most useful for you?

We’re talking about creating new neural pathways in the brain here. Only when they have a chance to reflect on what just happened can they solidify the new neural connections that they made during this conversation with you.

So your job as a manager and a leader is to help create the space for people to have those learning moments and to do that you need a question that facilitates a stronger foundation for those new neural connections - those insights or AHA moments they just had.

This moves you forward so that you are better equipped for future conversations with this person. You now know what kinds of insights they were looking for when they approached you with this challenge, so you can more easily tap into their motivations next time they come to you with a problem.

It also assumes that this conversation with you was useful. It reminds people how useful you are to them, but, again, you didn't do any of the work for them. That's how you can be useful as a team leader.

So how can you capitalize on these coaching techniques to bring out the best in the people you are working with?

Because if you’re better able to tap into their zones of genius, can you imagine what kind of impact that would make?

This whole sustainable schedule journey adds up to an environment where everyone involved is producing their best work, because they are primed for optimal brain functioning, they are accountable and in control of their experiences, and they are kicking ass with their own unique skill sets.

That’s the formula for sustained long term success, right there.

So next time, we’ll be going over Marketing Strategies so that you can save time, money, and energy yet get better results with your marketing efforts.⁣

And please let me know what you think! I am always open to feedback and love connecting with my audiences.

If you want to learn more, I personally invite you to join us in the Balanced Business Leaders VIP Group Program. In as little as one hour per week, you will walk away with a clear action plan to grow and scale your business sustainably.

Please visit linktr.ee/liminalclarity for more information.

You can find the episode outline, video recording, transcript downloads, related links, etc. below.

And, until next time, love you all, take care, and I hope you have a good day wherever you are.

[music outro]

View Details

VIDEO RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/tsgsuyx5wdk

RELATED LINKS:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders

https://linktr.ee/liminalclarity

https://www.liminalclarity.com/podcasts/

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone, welcome to the Balanced Business Leaders Podcast hosted by yours truly, Claire Jones, owner of Liminal Clarity. We are a business development agency that helps small business leaders scale and grow without burning out.

This is the next podcast in a series where we will be discussing the various trials and tribulations that lead me to creating my Three Pillars of Business Success, a framework that represents the foundational systems that contribute to sustainable business growth.

If you’re interested in learning more, please join us in our free Balanced Business Leaders Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders.

Ready? Alright, let’s dive in.

[musical intro]

So I started this podcast as a way to tell my story, particularly when it comes to the many, many different lessons that I have learned over the years when it comes to founding, developing, running, and growing small businesses.

This particular episode is about Delegation techniques, which represent the fourth step in creating a Sustainable Schedule for yourself as a busy small business leader.

Delegation is an important aspect of Sustainable Schedules because everyone is human and at some point we’re going to reach our personal limits.

There’s not enough time in the day, and you physically, mentally, and emotionally only have so much that you can contribute before you run out of gas.

So at some point, you’re going to have to start delegating tasks. And when I’m talking about delegating, it doesn't necessarily have to only apply to people that you are actively managing, like employees, but it can also include anyone that you're working with - like contractors, photographers, lawyers, bookkeepers, networking colleagues, even family members.

Whether this means enlisting your kids to help with cleaning the house, hiring a professional to help with your business bookkeeping tasks, or asking your cousin to take care of the mashed potatoes for your family’s Thanksgiving dinner - it is worth the time and energy to develop better delegation skills to make sure that each of these projects run smoothly with minimal involvement from you.

And the key to effective delegation is clearly setting expectations up front and then consistently checking in for opportunities to praise or redirect.

When you start any project, you need to let people know up front what you are going to do with them, how you are going to help them, and the criteria for achieving success in that scenario.

You have to clearly document, preferably written, what the goals are and what kind of behavior is going to achieve those goals so that everyone is on the same page.

You have to have them documented in some way so that there's no confusion as to what's expected and you also need to review them frequently because it’s very rare for things to go exactly according to plan. Change is a constant and so goals often need to be pivoted and adjusted along the way.

Most long-term goals need to be tweaked on a week-to-week basis to make sure that they still stay on track because things always change so you need to make sure that you're still on the right track and that you're still taking the right approach.

Again, we’re talking about self-awareness here - people need to be encouraged to notice what they're actually doing on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis and make sure that their actions and behaviors align with the goals you originally agreed upon.

This is often what trips a lot of people up because they think that if they just keep their original goal in mind, they'll eventually reach it somehow. That if they just create the vision board, or say their positive affirmations every morning, or keep telling themselves that they’ll lose 60 pounds in 3 months - it’ll somehow happen.

But you really have to break your goals down day by day, week by week, month by month, even quarter-by-quarter and year by year - depending on how big the goals are - to make sure that the tasks that you're doing are on a daily basis are gradually building up to the goal.

If the people involved are not doing the behaviors that contribute to the overall goal, then you need to change the behaviors so that you can get back on track.

If you want to buy that dream house, you need to break down each and every step that will get you there. If you want to get that promotion at work, you need to figure out what specific behaviors will achieve that goal. If you want to lose 60 pounds, you need to figure out what your exercise and diet plans are going to look like on a daily basis.

This is where the review comes into play - you need to periodically review to make sure that the actual behaviors are aligning with the goals. And, if you find that you’re still on the right track, then that’s where a quick and intentional praising can occur.

If things are going well, you need to recognize all of the small wins and celebrate them: Celebrate that you made an appointment with the realtor to start talking about that dream house of yours. Celebrate that you signed up for that management training that is required for the promotion. Celebrate that you successfully followed your exercise plan for the week.

You know, I always keep a bottle of champagne on hand. That is one of the ways that I can celebrate small wins throughout the week and it doesn't have to be a super expensive bottle - I mean, I honestly get the $7 prosecco at Costco and just stick it in the back of the fridge so that it’s available whenever I want to celebrate a small win.

So it doesn’t have to be a huge time suck, or a huge money suck. It can be anything from a gold star sticker to a bubble bath to a chocolate bar - what’s a small reward that you can give yourself or the people that you work with to reward a job well done?

I’ve even instituted a Victory List journaling exercise at different times in my life - where every night before bed, I write down at least 3 small wins that I had that day. You could easily work this into your work meetings even, where you spend the first 5 minutes of the meeting asking people to list a small win that either they had or someone else had that week.

These small wins deserve recognition, they deserve acknowledgement, and so when you review these goals and you notice that your behavior is on track to achieve your goals - you have to praise it.

But what happens when the goal is not achieved or the expected behaviors are not happening?

You’ve already established the goal and everyone's clear about the expectations for the goal but somehow, somewhere the train got off track.

So, now, you need a redirect. Keep in mind, this is not negative feedback. This is just redirecting the behavior that is happening so that you can better orient yourself to succeed.

In order to do this redirect, we need to first clarify again and agree on the goals to make sure that everyone’s still on the same page. Make sure that the expectations are clear and that everyone involved knows what specific behaviors are going to contribute to the overall goal.

Because maybe they weren't communicated properly the first time around, maybe you thought that everyone was on the same page - but turns out they were actually confused as to what specific behavior changes were required.

So revisit the goal and the behaviors and make sure that you’re all on the same page. Then, you can determine what the difference was between expectations and reality.

What did you think was going to happen? And what actually happened?

Basically, where exactly did things get off track? Because then you can address the specific behavior that didn’t align with the overall goal.

And remember to address it quickly, this is why the periodic review is so important. If you don’t address the behavior soon, the train could go miles off track before you are able to redirect it. Then, the redirecting process is going to take much, much longer to get it back on track.

We are focused on being more collaborative than competitive here. People are going to be more willing to change their behavior if they believe that you are on the same team. It’s not a me versus you situation, it’s an us versus the behavior situation.

Keep in mind here, that we are addressing the specific behavior - not the person that did the behavior. You are not attacking the person who did the behavior, you are not telling them that they are wrong, or that they are worthless or stupid or whatever.

You are collaborating together to determine why that specific behavior was unproductive and how you can redirect to, instead, incorporate a more appropriate behavior that aligns with the agreed upon goals.

You are telling them that you have faith in their ability to improve. You are telling them that they are still valuable and that they are still capable of performing the right behaviors.

You are redirecting someone’s behavior, you are not redirecting someone’s being. There’s a very big difference between the two.

If people feel like you are attacking their being, they’re not going to want to cooperate. They’re not going to be as open to hearing from you, they’re going to disengage and make it much harder to accomplish the shared goal.

And, when you finally get to the end of the redirect and everyone is on the same page and everyone understands what new behaviors are expected - then you need to let it go.

If it comes up again, address it again but do not continually bring it up or hold it over the person’s head. You need to let it go and move on. End of story.

And if a particular person tends to do the same unproductive behaviors over and over again, despite having a clear understanding that those behaviors are not aligning with the overall goal that you all agreed upon - then you need to redirect and find someone else to fill that role. It’s not personal, just find someone else whose behaviors align with the goal.

Alright, so to recap:

First step - clearly state the goal and the expected behaviors that will contribute to that goal.
Second step - periodically review to make sure that the actual behaviors are aligning with the expected behaviors
Third step - if things are on track, offer a praising
Fourth step - if things are not on track, offer a redirect
Fifth step - MOVE ON

With this framework, you and your team members will be able to achieve a lot more. You will be more productive, efficient, and effective. Now, doesn’t that sound enticing?

Think about projects that you’ve worked on in the past where expectations were not clear - it sucked, right?

I have found that, in workplaces where delegation is not handled effectively, employee morale and productivity deteriorates rapidly. When expectations are not clear, employees will either guess at how to do things or constantly pepper management with questions about how to do things. But neither of these methods produce good results.

If they’re guessing, they may or may not produce the right behaviors or results.

If they’re constantly asking management for guidance, then the leaders spend too much of their time micromanaging team members and everyone involved usually ends up feeling resentful.

Can you start to see why effective delegation techniques can make or break a business’s success? That’s exactly why it’s step #4 when creating Sustainable Schedules.

So next time, we’ll be going over Coaching Habits so that you can tap into the brilliance of the people around you. I hope to interweave my personal experiences with the business lessons I learned along the way so that I can paint a full picture for you guys.

And please let me know what you think! I am always open to feedback and love connecting with my audiences.

If you want to learn more, I personally invite you to join us in the Balanced Business Leaders VIP Group Program. In as little as one hour per week, you will walk away with a clear action plan to grow and scale your business sustainably.

Please visit linktr.ee/liminalclarity for more information.

You can find the episode outline, video recording, transcript downloads, related links, etc. below.

And, until next time, love you all, take care, and I hope you have a good day wherever you are.

[music outro]

View Details

VIDEO RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/wJ6XDmmUE7w

RELATED LINKS:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders

https://linktr.ee/liminalclarity

https://www.liminalclarity.com/podcasts/

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone, welcome to the Balanced Business Leaders Podcast hosted by yours truly, Claire Jones, owner of Liminal Clarity. We are a business development agency that helps small business leaders scale and grow without burning out.

This is the next podcast in a series where we will be discussing the various trials and tribulations that lead me to creating my Three Pillars of Business Success, a framework that represents the foundational systems that contribute to sustainable business growth.

If you’re interested in learning more, please join us in our free Balanced Business Leaders Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders.

Ready? Alright, let’s dive in.

[musical intro]

So I started this podcast as a way to tell my story, particularly when it comes to the many, many different lessons that I have learned over the years when it comes to founding, developing, running, and growing small businesses.

This particular episode is about Self Regulation techniques, which are strategies that represent the third step in creating a Sustainable Schedule as a busy small business leader.

So, at this point in the podcast series, you may be thinking - “these concepts are all great and all but how do I actually develop the self-discipline to stay on course and stay prioritized?”

I get it, I really do. It was definitely a learning curve for me as well when I started integrating these concepts into my own life.

When I first started prioritizing things like Down Time, Play Time, and Connecting Time - it all felt a bit silly to me, like all of this stuff should just happen naturally right? It was especially hard for me when I had to start being very firm about my boundaries for these activities.

I’ve always had the tendency to be a people pleaser, particularly when it came to social obligations and workplace scenarios. I always thought that I was being super helpful by overloading my plate with commitments to other people. My love language is actually Acts of Service, if that’s any indication of my tendencies.

But it often left me feeling overworked, overwhelmed, and, honestly, exhausted and cranky. I wasn’t sleeping well, I often got sick, and I felt unfocused and stressed most of the time.

It took me a while to realize the benefits of prioritizing myself and my own Healthy Mind Platter activities because I was used to NOT prioritizing myself. It was familiar and something I had been doing my entire life - so, I thought, if it had “worked” for this long, then why would I need to change? Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke, right?

Well, the truth was, I was broke - I just didn’t realize it. When it’s the norm to feel burnt out, it’s almost impossible to imagine what it would feel like if you weren’t.

But once I started really trying to incorporate these activities into my life and be firm about my boundaries around them, I realized I was happier. I was more energetic. I was sleeping better, I was feeling better, I had better relationships. I was getting more done AND still had time for myself.

Life, and especially business, is full of things that stress us out, whether it's our daily commute, airline travel, workplace conflicts, or disagreements with spouses, serious challenges to our emotional balance are many and varied. So how can you intentionally regulate yourself so that you can stay focused, unfazed, and on track?

So, according to the NeuroLeadership Institute, there are five ways you can regulate emotion:
situation selection,
situation modification,
attentional focus,
reappraisal, and
response modulation.

Different strategies impact the different stages of generating an emotion so there are pros and cons to each approach.

First, Situation Selection involves putting yourself into situations that promote the emotions you want to have and taking yourself out of situations that promote the emotions you do not want to have. In other words, you're intentionally selecting the situation that you think will provide you with the emotional experience you want to have.

For example, you may be wanting to better prioritize Time In but you are finding that you cannot focus well in your living room - where your dog and kid are seemingly conspiring to make it near impossible for you to focus and meditate. So, you may choose to employ Situation Selection and move your meditation practice to the bedroom where you can close the door, put on some relaxing music, and block out the activities going on elsewhere in the house.

Second, Situation Modification, on the other hand, is important if you can't avoid a certain situation. Instead, you attempt to modify the situation in some way to promote the kind of feelings you want to have.

For example, if you’re stuck in a noisy office environment and just can’t find a quiet place to escape to for your 15-minute meditation break, you can use noise-cancelling headphones to block out all of the distractions around you.

Third, Attentional Focus is an attention deployment strategy that involves focusing on the things that you want to process more deeply while diverting attention from other emotionally arousing input to temporarily lessen your response to it.

For example, you might be trying to prioritize Connecting Time with a work friend of yours but you two keep getting lost in conversations about work tasks whenever you meet up outside of work. Using Attentional Focus, you can practice intentionally focusing on non-work topics of conversation instead of getting distracted by the upcoming work project that you both share.

Fourth, Reappraisal is the most universally applicable emotion regulation strategy out of them all. It is the most well-known kind of cognitive change and it involves reinterpreting the meaning of a stimulus or event in a way that changes its emotional impact.

For example, you could be faced with the decision of whether or not to go to the gym one morning. You know that Physical Time is super important to your overall mental, emotional, and physical well being but you just don’t feel like going. So you could make up some excuses, letting yourself off the hook, or you could employ reappraisal and reframe the emotional impact by focusing on how good you will feel about yourself after you go. Instead of viewing the exercise as a punishment, you could intentionally choose to view it as a reward.

Fifth, Response Modulation is the last and potentially most harmful strategy for regulating emotions. It involves suppressing or enhancing the behavioral manifestation of an emotion. When suppressing, you are attempting to hide your feelings. When enhancing, you are trying to amplify whatever emotion you are feeling.

For example, say you are trying to prioritize Play Time more so you decide to start playing more board games with your friends or family. But, as it turns out, you’re a super competitive person and so you often find yourself getting very worked up and aggressive as the board game progresses. You start getting angry and vindictive, and you find yourself attempting to obliterate the other players before you realize that this isn’t actually fun for anyone involved. You’re not having fun because you’re angry and the other players aren’t having fun because they feel attacked.

So you could try to employ Response Modulation by either suppressing your anger and competitiveness (and probably failing in the process). Or, you could try to artificially enhance your enjoyment of the game by pasting a fake smile on your face and raising your voice a few octaves. You can already see where this approach can tend to not turn out well.

It may work temporarily, but over the long-term, this strategy has been shown to take a toll on your cardiovascular health since attempting to control your feelings without actually working through them is actually more physiologically arousing than going ahead and expressing what you feel. So it would probably behoove you to find a different activity to use for Play Time, maybe one where competition is not involved.

So many people are unaware of the cost of an unhealthy mental diet, such as massive losses to productivity, exhaustion, burnout, lack of emotion regulation, and stress.

You may be stumbling from one activity to the next driven by the needs of the brain without any level of awareness of why this chain of events is happening. We may even return home at night believing that we had a productive day without realizing that we are irritable, not because our significant other is being unreasonable, but because we are mentally exhausted.

And if we’re mentally exhausted, we’re not going to be able to access the mental resources that it takes to employ any of the above emotional regulation strategies. We’re talking about making space for yourself between your automatic reaction and your intentional response. Your automatic reaction is always going to be driven by the limbic center of your brain, the knee-jerk emotional center. This is the area that tells you to fight, flee, or freeze.

However, if you are able to design a life that holistically benefits your brain and allows you to better regulate your emotions then you are going to be able to enhance your ability to tap into the reasoning centers of your brain and effectively self-regulate.

As a small business consultant, many people ask me - what is the number one skill that leaders need to develop in order to be effective? And the answer is self-awareness.

Self-awareness is foundational because you need to be aware of what’s going on inside you, how that’s influencing your actions and reactions, and how your behavior is influencing the world around you.

This type of self-awareness is foundational to success in life and business, period.

You need to have control over your schedule and you need to be able to prioritize your time to maximize your success. It is near impossible to achieve success by running around panicked like a chicken with its head cut off - unfocused, scattered, and aimless.

And by self-regulating, we are better able to access the reasoning centers of our brain and be more intentional with our time.

So next time, we’ll be going over Delegation techniques so that you can successfully delegate tasks that are not in your zone of genius. I hope to interweave my personal experiences with the business lessons I learned along the way so that I can paint a full picture for you guys.

And please let me know what you think! I am always open to feedback and love connecting with my audiences.

If you want to learn more, I personally invite you to join us in the Balanced Business Leaders VIP Group Program. In as little as one hour per week, you will walk away with a clear action plan to grow and scale your business sustainably.

Please visit linktr.ee/liminalclarity for more information.

You can find the episode outline, video recording, transcript downloads, related links, etc. below.

And, until next time, love you all, take care, and I hope you have a good day wherever you are.

[music outro]

View Details

VIDEO RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/WrRp0Qwsv_8

RELATED LINKS:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders

https://linktr.ee/liminalclarity

https://www.liminalclarity.com/podcasts/

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone, welcome to the Balanced Business Leaders Podcast hosted by yours truly, Claire Jones, owner of Liminal Clarity. We are a business development agency that helps small business leaders scale and grow without burning out.

This is the next podcast in a series where we will be discussing the various trials and tribulations that lead me to creating my Three Pillars of Business Success, a framework that represents the foundational systems that contribute to sustainable business growth.

If you’re interested in learning more, please join us in our free Balanced Business Leaders Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders.

Ready? Alright, let’s dive in.

[musical intro]

So I started this podcast as a way to tell my story, particularly when it comes to the many, many different lessons that I have learned over the years when it comes to founding, developing, running, and growing small businesses.

This particular episode is going to be about Flexible Time Blocking and how to schedule your time so that you can get more done in less time.

So a lot of you may be interested in how I schedule my time on a weekly basis, especially when I'm being conscious of the seven facets of the Healthy Mind Platter.

As we discussed last time, these are the areas of your life that should be prioritized in order to achieve optimal brain functioning, including Connecting Time, Play Time, Physical Time, Sleep Time, Time In, Down Time, and Focus Time.

If you have a busy life with lots of responsibilities, it can often be difficult to find the time to prioritize all seven areas individually but I combine a lot of those activities to basically hit two birds with one stone.

So today, I'm going to be talking about my Google Calendar. This is basically the tool that I use to run my life. It is my to-do list, it is my task list, it is my reminder list. It is how I make sure that my time is strategic, intentional, focused, and effective.

To start, I have different colors for different activities. This helps me quickly prioritize my commitments as well as gives me an easy way to quickly identify what kinds of commitments I have on any given day.

Blue activities are activities for myself (more leisure time, self time, social time, or personal errand type of activities), light purple activities are general work tasks (like admin, marketing, prep work, or content creation), maroon activities are work meetings (like networking meetings, coffee meetings, or workshops), red activities are client related tasks (like client meetings, appointment reminders, money management, etc.), light pink tasks are “soft priorities” (I use these blocks of time as reminders that I intend to use that time for certain work tasks but they’re more flexible than, say, light purple or maroon or red tasks), and I use green for tasks that are for my mental and emotional health (like therapy or personal projects).

The different colors basically represent ranked priorities for me:

At the top of the list are red tasks, those are the highest priority. Next come the maroon tasks, then the light purple, then the light pink, then the green, then the blue. The blue tasks, for example, are the ones that I’m typically most willing to reschedule and move around in order to accommodate other commitments.

This type of prioritization goes way back for me - in high school, I even devised a system where I would draw a colored dot on the back of my left hand each day corresponding to the different tasks I had on my plate that day. Like, one day I would have three green tasks, one blue, and one purple so I would put three green dots, one blue dot, and one purple dot on my hand to keep me on track throughout the day. Nowadays, I have a calendar widget on my phone that I can easily reference.

Now, when it comes to the actual tasks, I use a system that I call Flexible Time Blocking.

It’s a way to organize your schedule so that you know what tasks you need to do, how long those tasks are going to take, and when those tasks need to be done, paired with the ability to move those blocks of time around when you need to. That way, the tasks don’t fall off your plate if something else comes up, like a meeting or a more time-sensitive task.

Say, for example, that I want to devote time on a daily basis to social media tasks and I’ve determined that it takes me about 45 minutes per day to check all of my platforms, create posts, and respond to notifications.

I will put it in my schedule as a light purple task - remember these are general work tasks like admin, marketing, prep work, or content creation. And I will make it a recurring appointment that occurs every weekday morning from 10:45-11:30am.

And, then, when I sit down at my desk every morning, I know exactly what I’m supposed to be doing during that particular time slot.

But, if I have a meeting that I need to set up during that time frame, then I can drag and drop it to another time in the day but I always make sure that I'm devoting 45 minutes a day to social media tasks.

This kind of system creates consistency and consistency creates results so it’s a great way to systemize your time and prioritize your time in a way that works for you.

Another example is lunch for me.

I always have to schedule in time to eat because I often get busy and forget to eat so I schedule in half an hour to eat every week day. It helps remind me to actually go and eat my lunch because I often get distracted or I schedule a meeting over that time without thinking and end up hungry and cranky and unfocused. So, moral of the story being, take care of yourself and remember to eat.

The key to setting up your schedule this way is to make sure that your time is prioritized with intention.

I often think of it as past Claire taking care of present (or future) Claire.

Past Claire already decided to prioritize this task on my schedule, so present Claire just needs to sit down and do the thing. It really helps decrease the amount of time I spend making decisions about what I’m doing on any given day.

This system even applies to non-work related tasks, like those for Connecting Time, Play Time, Physical Time, Time In, etc.

Take Play Time for example -

I’m a huge fan of this show called Critical Role - it’s a group of voice actors who stream their Dungeons & Dragons campaigns online. They usually stream every Thursday evening from 7-11pm and so I block out that time in my calendar every week.

It’s super fun and it’s a great way to insert some reliable Play Time into my week.

I also like to schedule some Art Time on the weekends, so I have a recurring block for it every Sunday afternoon. That’s another way I prioritize Play Time in my schedules.

Or take Physical Time for example -

I aim to go to the gym twice a week so I intentionally block out time in my schedule on Tuesday and Saturday mornings so that I don’t schedule over it.

I block out 8:45-10:15am every Tuesday because it takes me about 15 minutes to drive to the gym, an hour to workout, and 15 minutes to drive back home. Then I shower and I’m usually at my desk by 10:30am - just in time to respond to some emails before diving into my social media task block at 10:45am.

So I’m never worried about whether I’ll have time to workout or not, or whether I’ll be able to do my social media posts that day. It’s all scheduled out and ready to go.

Another example would be Time In - remember that I talked about this in the last episode. Time In is about intentional relaxation, reflection, or mindfulness. It is a type of focused training for the mind that uses self-inquiry and self-awareness to achieve self-regulation.

Personally, I like using mindfulness meditations for Time In. And, over the years, I’ve found that the best time for me to meditate is right after lunch.

So I block out 30 minutes for lunch and 30 minutes for meditation every day. But, if I have a networking event or something else that needs to get scheduled during that time frame, I can move those blocks around as needed.

For example, I attend a monthly networking event every third Thursday that goes from 12:30-3pm which encompasses my usual lunch break time frame. So, every third Thursday, I move the lunch block to 12-12:30pm and the meditation block to 3-3:30pm.

That way, I’m not starving during the networking meeting and I can still prioritize my Time In later in the day.

By prioritizing my meditation practice like this, I can consistently tap into and refresh my inner reserves. It helps me decrease stress and increase my ability to reflect and choose my responses and actions instead of succumbing to automatic and potentially problematic knee jerk reactions.

An example for prioritizing Focus Time would be my Client Time blocks. I want to make sure that I intentionally devote time to my clients so I schedule Client Time every weekday from 2:30 to 4 p.m.

This is the time that I schedule meetings with clients or do client work on my own and I just make sure that I have that time blocked out in my schedule and I don't schedule over it with other tasks that aren't devoted to money-making activities.

These are the light pink blocks I mentioned earlier. This is how I prioritize the work that actually needs to get done and makes me money instead of spending my time running around doing things that don't actually make me money.

So I have this every weekday for about an hour and a half and, again, if I have a meeting that I need to schedule that's not related to a client, I can move it up or move it down in the day.

I even make time blocks for things like groceries, cleaning, and self-care Sunday. Because I want to prioritize the things that matter to me.

For example, I hate going grocery shopping on the weekend because it’s always so busy. So I’ve intentionally scheduled an hour every Monday morning devoted to grocery shopping.

For cleaning, I’ve scheduled an hour every Saturday afternoon. Again, all of these tasks can be moved around - so if I have a particularly busy Saturday - say, for example, I have an all-day workshop to go to - then I can potentially move the grocery block to Sunday instead.

And for self-care Sunday, I have an hour scheduled every Sunday evening to slap on a face mask, kick back, and relax. Maybe you would rather take a bath, or go on a dog walk, or get your nails done - do whatever self-care feels right for you.

The point is valuing your time and your intentions with your time enough to make time for the things that matter to you.

So next time, we’ll be going over Self Regulation techniques, the third step in creating a Sustainable Schedule for yourself. I hope to interweave my personal experiences with the business lessons I learned along the way so that I can paint a full picture for you guys.

And please let me know what you think! I am always open to feedback and love connecting with my audiences.

If you want to learn more, I personally invite you to join us in the Balanced Business Leaders VIP Group Program. In as little as one hour per week, you will walk away with a clear action plan to grow and scale your business sustainably.

Please visit linktr.ee/liminalclarity for more information.

You can find the episode outline, video recording, transcript downloads, related links, etc. below.

And, until next time, love you all, take care, and I hope you have a good day wherever you are.

[music outro]

View Details

VIDEO RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/zGw-CA6cqXQ

RELATED LINKS:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders

https://linktr.ee/liminalclarity

https://www.liminalclarity.com/podcasts/

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone, welcome to the Balanced Business Leaders Podcast hosted by yours truly, Claire Jones, owner of Liminal Clarity. We are a business development agency that helps small business leaders scale and grow without burning out.

This is the next podcast in a series where we will be discussing the various trials and tribulations that lead me to creating my Three Pillars of Business Success, a framework that represents the foundational systems that contribute to sustainable business growth.

If you’re interested in learning more, please join us in our free Balanced Business Leaders Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders.

Ready? Alright, let’s dive in.

[musical intro]

So I started this podcast as a way to tell my story, particularly when it comes to the many, many different lessons that I have learned over the years when it comes to founding, developing, running, and growing small businesses.

This particular episode is about the Healthy Mind Platter, a research-backed framework that represents the first step in creating a Sustainable Schedule as a busy small business leader.

You know those days when you say, “I just can't handle it anymore, my plate is full”? Or, “I just want to break for once”?

That was me five years ago, I was in the midst of running my first business - a general store devoted to local goods. And I was working 60 hours a week in a white box surrounded by inventory I couldn’t sell.

I was completely burnt out because my brain had hit a wall, you know, I wasn't working at my optimal brain capacity. I wasn't able to show up as my best self on a day-to-day basis and one thing that really helped me get out of that funk was this awesome tool that I learned from The NeuroLeadership Institute.

It really helped me realize that I needed to prioritize these things in my life and actually commit myself to optimal brain productivity and I come back to this framework every time that I feel that sense of heaviness, burn out, desperation, and frustration.

Whenever I'm watching myself spinning my wheels and not really getting to where I want to go, I use this tool to create space in my brain and when I do that I get more done by doing less honestly.

I can take on bigger challenges and I'm more willing to go outside of my comfort zone because I have a bigger reservoir of energy and there's more resources available for my executive functioning - you know this space in your prefrontal cortex that’s right behind your forehead. It’s an area of the brain that is really important to your working memory, to memory retention, to emotion regulation, to working with others - all kinds of stuff.

Through years and years of analyzing fMRIs and brain studies and other psychological studies, the NeuroLeadership Institute has created the Healthy Mind Platter that represents seven areas of your life that should be prioritized for optimal brain functioning.

These are the seven items to prioritize in your schedule if you want to increase your creativity, innovation, efficiency, productivity, and your overall health. These are all essential for holistic, optimal brain health.

So as we go over these, there are three different categories: one is Social Needs (meaning Connecting Time and Play Time), then there are Physical Needs (meaning Physical Time and Sleep Time), and then there are Cognitive Needs (meaning Focus Time, Down Time, and Time In).

Starting with Social Needs, the first is Connecting Time and this satisfies our Social Need for connection. And while it's often more valued than Play Time, both are equally important.

Connection is vital to us humans because of our evolutionary wiring that predisposes us to seek out social connections in an attempt to increase our chances of survival. It's literally wired into our brain and it's a basic need akin to the need for food, water, and shelter.

So not only does social support have beneficial effects on the cardiovascular, endocrine, and immune systems but satisfying social relationships are also associated with more positive outlooks on life, more secure attachments and interactions with others, more flexibility when confronting psychological challenges, and more efficient restorative behaviors.

An easy action step would be to commit to spending time with close and reliable others twice a week for at least an hour and an easy tool to accomplish this is to maximize your time by doing group activities that satisfy both your need for Connecting Time and Physical Time.

This could be a game of pickup volleyball, pick up soccer, as long as you focus on the social interactions instead of the more competitive interactions of the activity because then again you can hit two birds with one stone.

Moving on to Play Time, on the other hand - it's often seen as an unimportant behavior regulated to the young and immature but play directly contributes to the release of dopamine which allows all animals in the animal kingdom to cope with the unexpected demands of a potentially threatening and stressful environment.

So for us, it’s a natural reward system that helps enhance our creativity and our capacity to adapt when faced with changing and challenging circumstances.

One thing that you could do to prioritize this is to devote at least 2 hours per week to unstructured play - just do something that makes you happy. You know, enjoy it and really lean into the joyful activities that you can participate in on a day-to-day or week-to-week basis.

An easy tool would be to use board games as a way to combine Play Time and Connecting Time. Again, there's a way to combine these so that you're not trying to schedule seven new blocks of time into your week. You can combine these two and really streamline your time, make it more efficient, and still reap the benefits of these different areas.

For example, I love to schedule monthly board game nights or crafting nights with my friends because both board games and crafting represent Play Time for me. They give me a chance to explore and play around with my imagination in a low-risk environment. I’ve even gotten into Dungeons & Dragons a lot in the last few years and that’s a great way to indulge in improv and imagination. Dancing, acting, painting, singing, playing instruments, playing with your kids or your pets - all of those can apply as long as you’re focused on the playful, explorative aspects.

Alright, so moving on to Physical Needs.

First off, Sleep Time is perhaps the most overlooked and undervalued but the most important area to focus on when the mind and body are exhausted and mental capacities start fading. Sleep deprivation is considered to be even more dangerous than a lack of food and sleep has been found to be essential for homeostatic restoration, temperature regulation, tissue repair, immunity, memory processing, and even emotion regulation.

So one thing you can do to prioritize Sleep Time throughout the week is to restrict your work time to 6 to 8 hours a day, get 6 to 8 hours of sleep per night.

Personally, I'm one who has always prioritized my sleep. I've always loved sleep and so I’ve found that 9 hours is actually optimal for me, but everyone is different so you need to find something that works for you. Some people need less time, some people need more time. So experiment and find out what your happy spot is. Just make sure that you’re consistent once you find a routine that works for you.

An easy tool to make sure that Sleep Time goes smoothly and seamlessly is to keep the bedroom dark and cool between 65 to 75 degrees and to keep all lights at a minimum.

So moving on to Physical Time: it refers to time spent working on your body or exercise or other means. And moving your body is critical in improving brain plasticity, in improving your immune system, and even in improving your overall mood.

Exercise also has the capacity to enhance learning and memory, counteract mental decline associated with aging, aid recovery from brain injury or disease, reduce stress and anxiety, alleviate depression, and improve executive functions such as response speed, working memory, inhibition of inappropriate behavior, and focus. They’ve actually found in various studies that exercise can be more effective in treating depression than prescription drugs.

So what happens in the brain when you are engaging in physical activities?

Your brain produces this awesome chemical called BDNF and it's basically Miracle-Gro for your brain. It enhances your brain's ability to create neural connections and so when you exercise before learning something you are much more primed to then learn the material that you're trying to absorb because your brain is a lot more primed to make the required neural connections that you need to make in order to learn the material.

They've done tons of studies over the years with elementary, middle school, and high school students. And they’ve found that if they put PE (physical education) at the beginning of the day, learning improves, test scores improve, there's less aggression in the classroom, people are in better moods, and they just experience better school conditions overall.

So it’s super important to get that Physical Time into your weekly schedule. One thing you can do is to set aside around 2 hours of moderate-intensity aerobic activity, 75 minutes of vigorous-intensity aerobic activity, or an equivalent mix of the two each week.

And an easy tool to make this a priority is to make it fun. You know, you can go dancing with friends or pick up a game of soccer with friends. There's a way to combine multiple areas on this Healthy Mind Platter in a way where you're not scheduling a separate slot for each activity on its own. You can combine them and try to hit two birds with one stone.

So moving on to the Cognitive Needs: Down Time is pretty much doing absolutely nothing. This used to be a hard one for me so it's something that I've really had to be conscious of incorporating into my day-to-day schedules and week-to-week routines.

It's intentionally having no intention. It allows our minds to freely wander in no particular direction - setting the stage for insight and permitting a process called integration, which is the linkage of differentiated parts, and this is especially important when solving complex problems or making complex decisions.

Down Time can occur between scheduled activities or it can be an activity within itself as long as the individual disconnects from their linear, intentional focus on their environment. This is basically daydreaming, you know, how much time do you spend throughout the day just taking a moment and daydreaming or taking a moment and letting your mind wander with no particular intention?

And Time In, on the other hand, involves intentional relaxation, reflection, or mindfulness. It is a type of focused training for the mind that uses self-inquiry and self-awareness to achieve self-regulation.

It is a process that aims to decrease sympathetic activation, heart rate, and muscle tension. By creating a space between physical, mental, and emotional reactions, it allows us to adopt and maintain a self-observing attitude.

Self-observation, when done in a non-judgmental and accepting manner, increases our ability to choose our responses instead of succumbing to automatic and potentially problematic physical, mental, and emotional responses.

This could be meditation or prayer, but it’s basically focusing on your internal states. Notice what is going on inside of you. Take a minute or two to check in with your internal sensations, your internal feelings, your internal thoughts, your internal processes. Notice them in a non-judgmental and accepting manner.

So an easy action step would be to set aside 15 minutes a day to be in silence with your eyes closed and an easy tool would be to set an alarm to remind you.

Finally, Focus Time is what we, in our Western Society, tend to focus on and value the most at the expense of all the other areas and it’s usually the most well-known out of these recommendations.

Focus Time is a unique activity that involves the mindset of being in a flow state. A flow state is the perfect combination of challenge and competency. It means that the task you are doing is not too challenging but you are also not too competent at completing it.

Focus Time is very encouraged in today’s work environments and an easy action item that you can do is to take note of when you lose track of time - that means you are in a Flow State. These are the activities where you hit that perfect balance between competence and challenge.

An easy tool is to jot down these activities and consciously make them part of your weekly schedule so that you can lose yourself in the activity in a way that benefits your mind in an awesome and optimally functional way.

I encourage you to take a look at how you assign your time throughout the day to determine which areas you are currently under-prioritizing or neglecting and, by doing this, you can intentionally design a life that holistically benefits your brain.

So next time, we’ll be going over Flexible Time Blocking, the second step in creating a Sustainable Schedule for yourself. I hope to interweave my personal experiences with the business lessons I learned along the way so that I can paint a full picture for you guys.

And please let me know what you think! I am always open to feedback and love connecting with my audiences.

If you want to learn more, I personally invite you to join us in the Balanced Business Leaders VIP Group Program. In as little as one hour per week, you will walk away with a clear action plan to grow and scale your business sustainably.

Please visit linktr.ee/liminalclarity for more information.

You can find the episode outline, video recording, transcript downloads, related links, etc. below.

And, until next time, love you all, take care, and I hope you have a good day wherever you are.

[music outro]

View Details

VIDEO RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/E5rgSbIB7IE

RELATED LINKS:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders

https://linktr.ee/liminalclarity

https://www.liminalclarity.com/podcasts/

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone, welcome to the Balanced Business Leaders Podcast hosted by yours truly, Claire Jones, owner of Liminal Clarity. We are a business development agency that helps small business leaders scale and grow without burning out.

This is the next podcast in a series where we will be discussing the various trials and tribulations that lead me to creating my Three Pillars of Business Success, a framework that represents the foundational systems that contribute to sustainable business growth.

If you’re interested in learning more, please join us in our free Balanced Business Leaders Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders.

Ready? Alright, let’s dive in.

[musical intro]

So I started this podcast as a way to tell my story, particularly when it comes to the many, many different lessons that I have learned over the years when it comes to founding, developing, running, and growing small businesses.

In this particular episode, I’m going to be introducing the first pillar of business success: Sustainable Schedules.

Why do we start here? Because you (and your team members) need to be able to successfully manage yourself, your time, your tasks, and your energy in order to scale your business without burning out in the process.

Creating a Sustainable Schedule for yourself is super important because I know too many small business leaders who are getting in their own way in how they run their businesses and their lives.

This is something that I'm really passionate about because I’ve definitely experienced that myself. I've been burnt out too many times, in the last five to six years, and I know how much it sucks especially when you are running your own business.

As I mentioned in the first episode of this series, I started my first business back in 2014 and I was stuck working 60 hours a week in a white box by myself surrounded by inventory I couldn’t sell and it was a really depressing place to be in.

Once I closed down the brick and mortar location and pivoted to online sales exclusively, I even picked up other jobs on top of that and at one point I had six different jobs that I was running at the same time just to keep things rolling, just make sure that I could make my rent every month, and it was a really hard place to be in.

I was completely burnt out, I was exhausted, I didn't have social support structures at the time - my roommate bailed on me in the middle of all of this and I had to pick up her half of the rent too - and it was just a crazy time in my life.

I wasn't taking care of myself, I didn't value myself enough to take care of myself, I didn't think it was worthwhile, and I didn't realize how important it was to take care of myself in order to take care of my business.

Because you can't pour from an empty cup and when you are burned out yourself, you're not going to be able to bring your best self to your business and give your best energy to your business and that's really where you need to be putting your energy when you’re a small business leader.

If you're burning the candle at both ends and if you're burnt out, you're not going to get as much done as you can, you're not going to be as productive, you're not going to be as efficient or as effective and, if we can make your time more streamlined and make it more intentional, then you're going to be able to get a lot more done, and you'll be a happier person, and you'll be able to be more creative and innovative.

So how can you take care of yourself and how can you structure your time on a day-to-day or weekly basis so that you are in optimal performance for your business?

First comes the Healthy Mind Platter. This is a framework designed by the NeuroLeadership Institute and they have found, after decades of brain research, that there are seven areas of your life that should be balanced for optimal brain functioning.

I introduce this framework first because it’s a great, scientifically-backed way to prioritize and structure your time so that you can show up as your best self in everything you do.

It’s about intentionally designing your life and your schedule, instead of always being in a negative brain space where you're neglecting your needs and neglecting your brain functioning. You're just going to be a better worker, you're going to be a better person, and you’re going to be a happier person if you’re able to prioritize these activities in your life.

These activities are divided into three different categories: Social Needs, Physical Needs, and Cognitive Needs.

Social Needs are Connecting Time and Play Time.

Physical Needs are Physical Time and Sleep Time.

And Cognitive Needs are Down Time, Time In, and Focus Time.

Second, comes Flexible Time Blocking.

This is a way to organize your schedule so that you know what tasks you need to do, how long those tasks are going to take, and when those tasks need to be done, paired with the ability to move those blocks of time around when you need to. That way, the tasks don’t fall off your plate if something else comes up, like a meeting or a more time-sensitive task.

I also prioritize these tasks with color-coding, so different colors are given different priorities. For example, red tasks are the ones related to client work or money making activities (like financial admin and stuff) - so those tasks are at the top of the priority list. But then there are blue tasks, which are more personal errands, personal chores, stuff like that. So they are going to be at the lower end of the priority list.

This way, when I have more time-sensitive tasks come up, I can easily see which tasks I can reschedule and move around and which tasks are too important to move.

This also allows me to maintain my boundaries around my schedule, like if someone asks me to have a networking coffee meeting with them but they propose a time that falls into my client time (which are light pink blocks for me) then I know that I should suggest other times, because I value my client time more so than networking coffees.

Third comes Self Regulation techniques.

These come into play because, in order to maintain the self discipline that it’s going to take to uphold your new prioritized schedule, you’re going to need to know how to manage your own emotions and actions so that you operate with intentional forethought instead of impulsive reaction.

How can you intentionally regulate yourself so that you can stay focused, unfazed, and on track?

According to the NeuroLeadership Institute, there are a variety of emotion regulation strategies you could use:

Situation Selection,
Situation Modification,
Attentional Focus,
Reappraisal, and
Response Modulation.

Each of these strategies affect different stages of the emotion generation process and so there are pros and cons to each approach. We will go over this in depth later in this series.

Fourth, after you’re able to take control of your emotional responses to situations in order to develop the self-discipline to maintain your new prioritized schedule - you need to figure out how to delegate effectively because everyone is human and at some point we’re going to reach our personal limits.

There’s not enough time in the day, and you physically, mentally, and emotionally only have so much that you can contribute before you run out of gas.

So at some point, you’re going to have to start delegating tasks. And when I’m talking about delegating, it doesn't necessarily have to only apply to people that you are actively managing, like employees, but it can also include anyone that you're working with - like contractors, photographers, lawyers, bookkeepers, networking colleagues, even family members.

Whether this means enlisting your kids to help with cleaning the house, hiring a professional to help with your financial bookkeeping tasks, or asking your cousin to take care of the mashed potatoes for your family’s Thanksgiving dinner - it is worth the time and energy to develop better delegation skills to make sure that each of these projects run smoothly with minimal involvement from you.

And, fifth, comes Coaching Habits.

Coaching the people you are working with is an important aspect of Sustainable Schedules because, again, we all have our personal limits. BUT we also all have our personal geniuses.

And when you coach people, instead of just telling them what to do, you get the chance to tap into the inner brilliance of the people around you.

If you can surround yourself with people who are all happily working within their zone of genius, can you imagine what a total powerhouse your business would be???

Everyone around you knows something you don’t. Everyone around you has experiences, skill sets, and knowledge sets that you don’t.

And in the coaching industry, professionally trained coaches believe that everyone is the expert in their own life. They know their lives best and they are the ones who are best able to come up with solutions, behaviors, opinions, or habits that align most with their inner guidance system.

So implementing coaching habits within your business (and life) will help your team members produce their best work.

To recap, your Sustainable Schedule journey starts at scheduling your time in a way that enhances your own brain functioning by prioritizing the 7 areas of the Healthy Mind Platter.

Second, you use Flexible Time Blocking to make sure that you stay on track and keep yourself accountable to your new schedule.

Third, you tap into Self Regulation techniques to effectively manage your emotional experience of your new schedule, thereby empowering yourself with a sense of control.

Fourth, you start Delegating the tasks or activities that aren’t in your zone of genius.

And, fifth, you Coach the people around you so that they are better able to tap into their own zones of genius.

All of this adds up to a schedule where everyone involved is producing their best work, because they are primed for optimal brain functioning, they are accountable and in control of their experiences, and they are kicking ass with their own unique skill sets.

That’s the formula for sustained long term success, right there.

Imagine if you and the people around you were consistently and intentionally energized, productive, and happy… how would that impact your business and your life?

Alright, so next time, we’ll be going more in depth into the first step of Sustainable Schedules, the Healthy Mind Platter. I hope to interweave my personal experiences with the business lessons I learned along the way so that I can paint a full picture for you guys.

And please let me know what you think! I am always open to feedback and love connecting with my audiences.

If you want to learn more, I personally invite you to join us in the Balanced Business Leaders VIP Group Program. In as little as one hour per week, you will walk away with a clear action plan to grow and scale your business sustainably.

Please visit linktr.ee/liminalclarity for more information.

You can find the episode outline, video recording, transcript downloads, related links, etc. below.

And, until next time, love you all, take care, and I hope you have a good day wherever you are.

[music outro]

View Details

VIDEO RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/L4ZWu21Ogdw

RELATED LINKS:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders

https://linktr.ee/liminalclarity

https://www.liminalclarity.com/podcasts/

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone, welcome to the Balanced Business Leaders Podcast hosted by yours truly, Claire Jones, owner of Liminal Clarity. We are a business development agency that helps small business leaders scale and grow without burning out.

This is the next podcast in a series where we will be discussing the various trials and tribulations that lead me to creating my Three Pillars of Business Success, a framework that represents the foundational systems that contribute to sustainable business growth.

If you’re interested in learning more, please join us in our free Balanced Business Leaders Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders.

Ready? Alright, let’s dive in.

[musical intro]

So I started this podcast as a way to tell my story, particularly when it comes to the many, many different lessons that I have learned over the years when it comes to founding, developing, running, and growing small businesses.

This particular episode is going to be about the Three Pillars as a whole, why they’re important, and why I structured them the way that I did.

Alright, so to give you a little bit of background on myself (if you didn’t catch the previous podcast) - from age 15 onward, I’ve always worked with small businesses and arts organizations that were under 60 staff members total. So I've seen first-hand what challenges these businesses run into. I’ve seen both how they can struggle and how they can succeed in their businesses and in their lives.

I even started my first business back in 2014 - a general store devoted to local goods in West Seattle - and the information that I’m presenting to you today is the kind of stuff I wish I had had back then.

Back then, I had found myself working 60 hours a week in a white box by myself surrounded by inventory I couldn’t sell and it was a really depressing place to be in. I was living by myself, eating rice & beans for dinner, feeling burnt out and exhausted.

After coming out of this, I realized that there were structures that I could put in place though. Systems that would help me streamline my time and be more efficient, effective, productive, and happier in general.

In this vein, I created my Three Pillars of Business Success: Sustainable Schedules, Marketing Strategies, and Processes & Systems. And I’d like to share them with you today so that you can free up your time and actually enjoy this business that you’re building. Yes, I’m saying that you too can scale your dream business without burning out.

Alright, so, why are sustainable schedules important?
Because you can't burn the candle at both ends and you need to make sure that everyone’s personal sustainability supports the business’s sustainability. Because you can't pour from an empty cup!

Why are marketing strategies important?
Because you need to strategically go after marketing opportunities that will help you reach your ideal audiences and do it with intentional forethought instead of impulsive reaction.

You need to do this instead of scattershooting your approach because so many small-business leaders try so many different avenues in so many different ways and they're not really focusing their marketing efforts to get quality ROI from their efforts and time spent.

Why are processes & systems important?
Because you need to streamline your day-to-day routines and day-to-day tools so that everything flows easily - like a well-oiled machine - instead of having to reinvent the wheel every day.

So when I’m talking about Sustainable Schedules, I'm talking about things like self-awareness, self-regulation, delegation, mental productivity, mindset, wellness & burnout, and time management.

Basically, how do you (and your team members) manage your time and how do you make sure that your schedule is sustainable so that you're not burning out?

I know what it's like to burn out in your business. You are running, you are hustling, you are trying to go in so many different directions all at once and you really need to be strategic about your time because you're not going to be able to bring your full self to the business and bring your full self to your passion if you’re burning out.

You built a business around a passion of yours, around a zone of genius, and what you really don't want to do is deplete yourself so then you can't even show up fully.

I definitely experienced this in my first business - my schedule was not strategic and I was exhausted and frustrated and stressed all the time, but I learned systems and tools like the Healthy Mind Platter that really helped.

The Healthy Mind Platter is a great framework that was developed by the NeuroLeadership Institute and they have identified seven areas of your life that should be balanced and prioritized in order to have optimal brain functioning. They created it by looking at the brain through fMRI machines, doing a bunch of psychological studies and other scientific studies and they found that there's seven areas that you need to prioritize in your life in order to have optimal brain functioning.

Those areas are things like Social Needs (which means Connecting Time and Play Time), Physical Needs (which means Physical Time and Sleep Time), and Cognitive Needs (which means Down Time, Time In, and Focus Time). And you need to prioritize each of those seven areas in your life to make sure that you're showing up as your best self in your business.

So that's the first step to creating a Sustainable Schedule.

Step #2 is Flexible Time Blocking. Step #3 is Self Regulation. Step #4 is Delegation. And step #5 is Coaching Habits.

We will be going over each of these steps more in depth in the coming podcasts, so stay tuned!

Pillar number two, then, is Marketing Strategies:

How are you intentionally focusing your efforts when it comes to marketing strategies?

Are you taking a scattershot approach?

Are you trying too many things so that the quantity is over running the quality of your marketing efforts?

So I'm talking about Google services, social media profiles, branding, customer engagement, content creation, and website development.

How are you focusing your efforts and time by focusing on your target market?

For example, a lot of people say when it comes to social media profiles - if your target demographic has people over 30, you're going to be better off on Facebook; but if your target demographic is under 30, you're going to be better off on Instagram.

Or if you're a business-to-business kind of company, where you work more with business owners or corporations, Linkedin is probably going to be your best bet.

Or if you're helping the more elderly market and offering senior care services or stuff like that, you might want to consider doing snail mail as your primary marketing effort. Because a lot of them aren't on Facebook, a lot of them aren't on Instagram.

So how are you reaching your target demographics?
Do you even know what your target demographics are?
Have you created your ideal customer avatar?
How can you reach them with intentional forethought instead of impulse?

Because there is this concept called the Shiny Object Syndrome and I see a lot of small business leaders fall into this trap. It’s when you go after any shiny object, any shiny idea that you come up with and then you have a scattered approach and you never actually get much done.

You feel like you’re being productive, because you’re completing tons of tasks day-in and day-out but you’re again at quantity over quality. And what we want to focus on is a higher quality of marketing engagement, a higher quality of customer engagement, and how can you actually save time but get better results?

And it doesn’t have to be complicated, it doesn’t have to be a huge time suck or money suck. At the end of the day it's just being strategic and being intentional with your efforts when it comes to marketing.

Especially when it comes to marketing, you need to realize:

How many people are you building relationships with every day?

How many touch points do you need to make with them so that you can stay in contact with them and nurture those relationships?

How many times do you give them a chance to know, like, and trust you?

So Step #1 for Marketing Strategies is figuring out your Platforms & Customer Demographics. Then step #2 is Websites & Google My Business. Step #3 is Touchpoints. Step #4 is Content Creation. And step #5 is Content Management.

And then, pillar number three is overall business Processes & Systems:

How are you structuring your day-to-day routines and the tools that you use so that you are being efficient with your time?

A system is basically just a set of principles or procedures by which something is done and so it doesn't have to be too complicated. You just have to know the procedure by which something is consistently done. Then you're not reinventing the wheel each and every day and you’re not wondering what you should do next or what the next step is because that wastes a lot of time at the end of the day. These are sometimes called SOPs - Standard Operating Procedures.

I'm talking about things like financial processes and systems, workflows, operating manuals, and leadership - leadership is definitely a system.

Leadership is a procedure by which you lead. How can you incorporate a leadership system into your day-to-day routines so that leadership is not something that you need to troubleshoot or a fire that you need to put out on a day-to-day basis but something that you just consistently do?

How do you systematically motivate your employees? Leadership is totally a system.

Making decisions is totally a system. What is the procedure by which you make decisions? Are they based on feelings? Based on facts? Pros and cons lists?

Employee Engagement and management, like leadership, is also a system. How do you systematically and procedurally motivate and manage your employees?

And then business relationships can also be a system. How do you systematically track those relationships that you're building on a day-to-day basis?

So Step #1 for Processes & Systems, then, is Business Plans. Step #2 is Financial Processes. Step #3 is Client Journey. Step #4 is Company Structure & Workflows. And step #5 is Operations Manuals.

Keep in mind that we will be going through each of the three pillar systems in depth in the coming episodes.

So next time, I’ll be introducing Sustainable Schedules and giving some background on why I chose it as my number one pillar of business success. I hope to interweave my personal experiences with the business lessons I learned along the way so that I can paint a full picture for you guys.

And please let me know what you think! I am always open to feedback and love connecting with my audiences.

If you want to learn more, I personally invite you to join us in the Balanced Business Leaders VIP Group Program. In as little as one hour per week, you will walk away with a clear action plan to grow and scale your business sustainably.

Please visit linktr.ee/liminalclarity for more information.

You can find the episode outline, video recording, transcript downloads, related links, etc. below.

And, until next time, love you all, take care, and I hope you have a good day wherever you are.

[music outro]

View Details

VIDEO RECORDING:

https://youtu.be/D-7rvyqPrRo

RELATED LINKS:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders

https://linktr.ee/liminalclarity

TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone, welcome to the Balanced Business Leaders Podcast hosted by yours truly, Claire Jones, owner of Liminal Clarity. We are a business development agency that helps small business leaders scale and grow without burning out.

So this is the first podcast in a series where we will be discussing the various trials and tribulations that lead me to creating my Three Pillars of Business Success, a framework that represents the foundational systems that contribute to sustainable, long term business growth.

If you’re interested in learning more, please join us in our free Balanced Business Leaders Facebook Group at facebook.com/groups/balancedbusinessleaders.

Ready? Alright, let’s dive in.

[musical intro]

So I started this podcast as a way to tell my story, specifically the many, many different lessons that I have learned over the years when it comes to founding, developing, running, and growing small businesses.

In this episode, I will be introducing myself and my backstory so that you can start to see how I got to where I am today. It’s been a long, convoluted journey fraught with peril, confusion, and guesswork and I imagine that some of you will be able to relate.

So I’ve been working with small businesses for my entire career. Starting at age 15, I got my first job working as an art camp counselor.

And that was where I first learned a lot of important skills for the workplace, like:

How to show up on time, how to develop relationships with coworkers, how to wear a lot of different hats at the same time, how to pick up job duties that may or may not be my direct responsibility.

These are often considered “soft skills”. These are the skills that are required when working in small businesses. When a company has a large workforce, it’s much easier to “stay in your lane”. It’s much easier to stay within your comfort zone, doing only the things that you are directly responsible for.

But that’s not how small businesses work typically. Small businesses rely on all team members to pitch in whenever and wherever it’s needed. Working as an art camp counselor was no different.

And I actually ended up returning to that job every summer for the next four years…

Over time, I learned…how to remain calm in stressful situations, how to avoid gossip and provide balanced, thoughtful counsel to the people who asked for it, how to facilitate deliverables and team efforts, and how to manage a variety of expectations and communication styles…

These are a variety of soft skills that directly contribute to developing a reputation for being a trusted, reliable worker. It’s hard to quantify the exact impact that these skills have on overall business performance, but they are vital to business success.

This is exactly why relationship and communication skills are deeply interwoven into my Three Pillars of Business Success. Whether it’s in the context of delegating, managing, leading, marketing, making sales, or developing trust with customers and team members - these “soft skills” are super important.

During these high school years, I also picked up a few after school jobs and volunteer positions.

At age 15, I worked as a volunteer store clerk for Ten Thousand Villages - an organization that has stores across the US who specializes in fair trade goods from third world countries.

At age 16, I was hired as the first employee for a small, family-owned retail store that specializes in modern home decor and gifts.

And at age 17, I was hired as the sales and office assistant for a musical arts center that offered music lessons, instruments, accessories, and sheet music.

All of these positions taught me how to... Manage people, develop interpersonal skills, work with different tech programs…

These positions made me a very adaptable worker - almost a chameleon of sorts. They directly contributed to me being able to approach any work environment, any software application, any business structure and not only get by but actually thrive.

As an only child of divorced parents, I have often been a social outsider - someone who adapted to the environment that they were placed in. But these positions molded that tendency into a strength, into an employable skill set.

I now had the experience of bringing that outside perspective to businesses in a way that allowed me to see how their current structures and systems could be improved. I re-organized store rooms, I updated filing systems, I streamlined operations and found short cuts.

Bill Gates is often credited with saying, “I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it.”

Was it because I was smarter than the people working there? Probably not. Was it because I was lazy? That’s more likely. But the point here is that I was intent on making things easier for myself and everyone involved. Oh man, how I love efficiency.

So then, once I got to college, I picked up a few on campus positions -

I volunteered as a library research intern for an art museum.

I worked as a humanities assistant for one of my professors.

I worked as a dorm patroller on the weekends making sure that students were safely enjoying their recreational activities.

And, during the summers, I worked as an administrative assistant for a small advertising company as well as a gallery assistant for an art gallery.

All of these positions taught me… How to organize and document information, how to respect confidentiality, how to mediate disputes, how stagnant workplaces can become, and how to occupy myself when I didn’t have any work to do…

Because of my (dare I say?) obsession with efficiency, I often finished my work well before my shift ended. Some of these workplaces recognized this and tried to give me more to do, some didn’t.

These were the positions where I learned the dangers of rocking the boat, per se. Some people just don’t want to change. They aren’t interested in optimizations and improvements. They have grown comfortable with the way things are - the status quo.

One of these positions even tried to hire me back after I graduated from college. I had proved myself to be a hard worker who got a lot done, but their company culture was oppressively stale. Nothing had really changed within their business since the 1980s. So as someone who loves innovation, I had to politely decline the opportunity.

As college was wrapping up, I was aiming to focus on the art world in particular so that I could put my BA in Art History to good use.

So at the end of my senior year, I worked at the New York Frieze Art Fair as a press relations assistant.

During that summer, I volunteered at the Seattle Art Museum in their rights and reproductions department.

And then, that fall, I interned at the Actors Theatre of Louisville as their festival management intern for nine months.

These positions taught me… how to take initiative, how to network, and how to manage complex projects and team relationships in a variety of both formal and informal social environments..

From there, I settled down in Seattle and started looking for a long-term, career position.

But while hopping around from hourly wage, PT job to hourly wage, PT job for a couple of years, I realized an important truth when it comes to finding growth-oriented positions - it’s all about who you know, not what you do.

It was the beginning of a very hard lesson for me. I had always been the honors kid in the 90th percentile. I had always overperformed and overproduced in every job I had, because I believed that my work would speak for itself. I believed that people would recognize my value and reward me accordingly.

But, unfortunately, that’s not really how it works. This was the beginning of the phase in my life where I realized the importance of social circles.

Maybe it was because I was an only child and was used to moving around a lot. But I hadn’t found my tribe yet.

So eventually, after a couple of years of dead end positions, I got fed up and decided to open my own retail store. Because if no one else was going to offer me a growth-oriented position, then I was going to hire myself.

In this business, I learned A TON. It was basically my crash course MBA program and, while it absolutely sucked at the time, it started me down the path that I’m on today. It ended up lasting for two years and it was two years of constant stress, self doubt, depression, frustration, and loneliness.

After burning myself out multiple times, I spent a year trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. And, unfortunately, I went from one extreme to the other. I went from working FT, 60 hrs per week to working 60 hrs per week in six different PT positions - thereby making the burn out even worse.

It was really a shitty period of my life.

But eventually, with some encouragement from those close to me, I started advocating for my own value and pivoted into more advisory roles. Because I realized that, over the years, I had learned how to found, develop, run, and grow small businesses.

So I started applying all of my experiences and lessons in a couple of different small businesses in the Seattle area. And I also started diving headlong into research, reading every book I could find on business development, marketing, and leadership skills.

These roles directly led me to starting my second business, which eventually became Liminal Clarity.

Over time, I had realized that many small business leaders weren’t actually equipped to run businesses. They had their own zone of genius that they loved doing and wanted to monetize, but they didn’t have the know-how to run and grow a sustainable business. So I founded a new business to address that need.

This was really when I started to implement my lessons when it came to social circles. Thanks to all of the research I had done, I knew I needed to develop relationships with people first and foremost this time around.

So I launched myself into networking and fortunately found my tribe. As I connected with more and more small business leaders, I realized that, while there were many other competitors out there who offered specialized business support services - like social media, finances, etc. - there weren’t many people offering holistic business strategies.

There weren’t many people out there who addressed the needs of a small business as a cohesive organization, as an integrated system that could be designed to be self-sustaining.

And that’s exactly why I ended up creating my Three Pillars of Business Success, which will be the focus of this podcast series.

So next time, I’ll be introducing my three pillars and giving some background on why I structured them the way that I did. Because they represent the structures that I wish I had had back when I started the retail store.

Throughout this podcast series, I hope to interweave my personal experiences with the business lessons I learned along the way so that I can paint a full picture for you guys. Call me your trusted guide, or your bullshit filter, I’m here to help you navigate the many pitfalls that befall small business leaders as they try to scale and grow their businesses.

And please let me know what you think! I am always open to feedback and love connecting with my audiences.

If you want to learn more, I personally invite you to join us in the Balanced Business Leaders VIP Group Program. In as little as one hour per week, you will walk away with a clear action plan to grow and scale your business sustainably.

Please visit linktr.ee/liminalclarity for more information.

You can find the episode outline, video recording, transcript downloads, related links, etc. below.

And, until next time, love you all, take care, and I hope you have a good day wherever you are.

[music outro]

The Balanced Business Leaders Podcast: Recent Episodes

Claire Jones