The things we hear all the time are either, “I’m doing all the right things but I don’t necessarily know what to focus on next. I don’t know which lever to pull next and I don’t know why I’m feeling so overwhelmed.” Or, “This is so fun and easy! How do I set up myself for success in the future? How do I maintain this and keep growing?” We find that everyone’s always trying to look ahead, yet what’s truly beneficial is understanding the phase that you’re currently in order to clock why things are going well, where they’re going wrong, and what you need to do to move into the next phase. What we forget is that pitfalls are inevitable and that, as things grow, there are going to be roadblocks, hesitations, and frustrations. We are all bound to feel stuck at some point or another we want to assure you that this feeling is normal (and necessary) and that we can help you to get out of it! In this episode, we tackle the three phases we see every service-based business owner move through, fill you in on how we really feel about burnout, and share our greatest wish for every single service-based business owner out there.

What kind of business are you dreaming of? Whatever that looks like, it is your choice! And you get to make that everyday. We’ve had a lot of people approach us asking for permission to pursue a life-first business, but the call is yours to make. Our lives are all so different and unique that we can’t prescribe the details of what a life-first business looks like for you, but we can offer you some hard-earned wisdom to guide you in creating a framework that works for you! We all have boundaries we need to put in place to fulfill the life-first structure to support you as you create the life that you want. It’s fully within your power to implement and enact a plan to achieve it, but you’ve got to make the call. While there’s never going to be a magic bell that tells you what to do, we’re here to help show you the way.

Starting a business is a huge undertaking. And sometimes when we’re in the midst of building a company and struggling with a particular problem, it can be tempting to simply give up and start over with a new business. But the amount of work it takes to get a business off the ground is far more overwhelming than making changes to your current business. It’s just that it usually doesn’t feel that way because you’re not in the thick of things.

In today’s episode, we’ll be tackling the topic “What would we do differently if we were starting over?” Tuning in you’ll hear about some of the mistakes we’ve made, what precipitated them, and how we’ve helped clients avoid the same pitfalls. It may seem like the things that worked seven years ago would no longer be relevant today, but we’ve found that’s totally not the case. Many of the most important lessons we’ve learned are ones we often need to be reminded of to help us solve current problems. So this episode has been really helpful for us too! Tune in to hear our lessons on scaling up, honing in on your talents, why we love collaboration, and so much more!

We may be divided in how aware we currently feel in terms of how we’re spending our time, but one thing we can agree on is that we need to be mindful of it! So many mentors over the years have questioned how we’re utilizing our time and, for as many years, it wasn’t being used as effectively as it could be! As service-based business owners, many of us tend to wear too many hats, which prevents us from focusing on what we do best. We’ve personally been through a really unique season where we've been hiring a lot and we have more help than we’ve ever had! This has allowed for more time to rethink how we’re spending the time we do have, instead of simply filling it with the necessary tasks to keep charging on.

Does that mean we’re working any less? Absolutely not. This is not a slow season by any means, but we have been able to dig into a time where we can be really intentional. In this episode, we discuss the importance of protecting your hours and being intentional with your time, the value of visioning, and the seven most common mistakes we see service-based business owners making. Tune in to find out what needs to shift in order for you to unlock future growth and move towards a life-first business!

There’s something in the air at the moment; so many people are questioning themselves and their businesses, and there are a whole lot of very valid reasons for this (we are in the midst of a pandemic and heading towards a potential World War, after all). A lot of service providers have, as a result of these feelings of uncertainty and overwhelm, considered pivoting their business by adding different streams of revenue, changing their offerings, and so on. For anyone who is entertaining alternative ideas, we understand the allure, but we want to bring you back to reality and share with you what you should be doing during these challenging times instead!

If you are a service provider finding yourself in need of a little bit of a serotonin boost and you’re looking for a pep talk from your Biz Fairy Godmothers, this is the episode for you! We have some really valuable reframes for you; some shifts in thinking. We see you in ways that you perhaps don’t see yourself, and we want to share those insights with you. We’re going to share some really cool, kind, impactful things with you today, so prepare to be showered in words of support. It might make you feel uncomfortable and you may have a hard time accepting the compliments, but here’s the thing: it’s because we genuinely care!

No one else is saying these things to you and it’s important to us that we pour back into you in the same way that you’ve poured into us over the years. We are ready for you to believe in yourself in the way that we believe in you. That means listening to the things we’re saying, truly taking them to heart, and allowing them to sink in and make an impact. Tune in to learn about the reframes that service providers need to hear right now and to find out what we see in you (it’s a lot!) so you can believe in yourself in new ways. Never fear, your Biz Fairy Godmothers are here!

Many people ignore the things that can really move the needle in their businesses because they often seem deceptively simple. We want to help you understand these simple ‘levers’ and use them correctly, because we can guarantee that they will improve your business in more ways than one! In this episode, we let you guys in on the not-so-secret levers that will allow you to continue to prosper and create more profit in your business. Hitting ceilings of time and money are an inevitable part of running a business, but your ability to adjust the levers that talk about today is a superpower that you will always have.

Tuning in today, you’ll find out how to decide which of the two levers you need to pull next in order to increase profits or get more of your time back, how to start with a life-first mentality when shaping your offers and price, and the self-reflection questions you can ask yourself when you've hit an income and capacity ceiling, plus so much more!

Today, we want to talk about what happens when you grow your own business only to wake up one day and realize that, although you’ve grown out of the ‘wearing all the hats’ phase and you’ve got all the right people and systems in place, everything still seems to be falling apart. You might still feel like you’re doing 75 million things and you have no idea how you got here or what you’re doing and you feel deeply ashamed that you don’t know how to fix it.

We’ve met so many self-proclaimed entrepreneurs who are the CEOs of their businesses, yet they don’t really know what it means to fully sit in that seat, and part of the confusion lies in the fact that they are incredibly talented. We’re talking about people who have typically excelled in everything they’ve ever done! They’re so used to being the star and, suddenly, they feel like they’ve hit a ceiling. This moment of reckoning is inevitable, and it hits everyone at a different point. For some, it'll feel like an income ceiling and, for others, it might feel entirely time-related. For some of you, it might be a recognition that you need more help but you can’t afford it, or that you’re mismanaging the help you do have, have the wrong help, or you don’t know how to identify the help you need.

The interesting thing about any mistake is that it’s not always detrimental when you do it at the beginning, but holding onto it can sometimes prevent you from future success! At a recent conference we spoke at, we were asked about some of the biggest mistakes we have made in our business; and one of the things we highlighted was structuring our business according to task-based activities, rather than bringing in a team of permanent employees with outcome-based deliverables.

Something we feel is getting a little bit confused in the realm of being a service provider consultant, learning from other people, hiring contractors, having employees, and serving clients, is the question of how we serve said clients, how we learn, and how we get work done in our own business. The conversation around working one-on-one with people, using done-for-you services, and learning in different aspects by buying books, hiring a coach, or being in a group coaching program, all start to get a little muddy when we’re also service providers in that very business.

We want to clear this up and provide some perspectives and clarification on the buckets we see us providing, our clients providing, our clients hiring for, and really how things can be structured to have purpose within these different containers. Today, specifically, we’re talking about what the heck group coaching is and when it’s actually beneficial, versus one-on-one coaching and done-for-you services, both as a provider and the consumer.

If you follow us on social media you may be aware that we have just announced our first virtual conference! While the conference will no doubt share some similarities with our online summits, we anticipate that previous attendees will be shocked by how incredibly different this experience truly is. One of the developments that we are most excited about is the fact the entire event will be live, giving us the scope to connect with attendees in real-time! We are also deeply aware that our participants are incredibly busy which is why we’re so proud that the entire conference will take place over the course of one day within four sessions!

This is the second hottest take of a conversation we’ve ever had publicly! We are so passionate about this topic, and we really want to pass on this valuable information to you because we deeply care about you and your team! When the mistakes that we are going to talk about today are made, we know that it’s coming from the best of places, but because the future of your company is at stake, and because we care about that, we really hope you’re going to listen to this episode!

The fact of the matter is that you are most likely drastically overpaying your staff. We so often see owners hardly taking a salary for themselves, but then paying their staff six figure salaries. We also see people hiring super cheap labor. There is so much wrong with both of these phenomenons, but the good news is that there is another option!

Today we are going to be sharing some thoughts and some hot takes about hiring! There are so many people out there saying all sorts of things that make our insides squirm, and we don’t want you to waste your time and effort on strategies that definitely do not work. We also got sucked into the sexiness of the idea of hiring duplicates of ourselves, so we speak from firsthand experience when we tell you that this is a BIG mistake!

When people get to the point where they know they need to bring on someone else, it’s usually because of one of two main reasons; either that they need to hire for a very specific role for their company, or they’re burning the candle at both ends and therefore if they hire “another me” they’ll be able to get twice as much work done, but if you keep listening you’ll understand why you should never hire another you!

There’s a problem that we’re seeing in this space and it’s causing people to miss massive opportunities! You’re losing out on revenue and you’re losing out on tapping into familiar industry terms, and so much of this can be solved by simply re-labeling who you are to become well-known to the rest of the world. For years, small business owners, especially those in the creative space, have continued to label themselves as such. “I’m a small business owner”, “I run a small creative business”, “I’m a creative entrepreneur”, we’ve seen these terms run rampant.

But the thing that is missing right now in this space is that you are not utilizing terms that the rest of the world recognizes and already uses and, because of that, you’re missing out on business. If you have previously identified as a creative small business owner, especially those of you who are running a B2B service-based business helping other small businesses, we have an uplevel for you. We can change the game!

When we first decided to take a workcation, there was no way of knowing just how beneficial it would be. We have always added in times to do planning sessions and pin down what we want, but what we have learned is that creating a dedicated time to make sure it happens is so, so important. The only way for our business to move forward in the past was for us to hop on the phone with one another, and brainstorm ideas. But as our roles have shifted, this hasn’t happened as often. That’s why we’ve carved out CEO time on our to-do list, to help us have the correct focus.

We’ve all spent so many years working for businesses that are not structured well, not managed well, and that took all the lessons we didn’t like and implemented them in the workplace. This is the extreme opposite of many of our efforts to create flexible environments that take into account all of our humanity. But what we’ve found is that the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Not having boundaries or expectations doesn’t help anyone either!

To us, knowing that we had the time to think and brainstorm without boundaries, but also adding boundaries to make the follow-through inevitable, was everything! It’s so important to add enough momentum to make sure that you achieve what you’re hoping to achieve. When you take incremental steps, it doesn’t feel like you’re eating the whole pie at once! Our main takeaways from the experience were that there’s a difference between the conversations that are had within leadership and team meetings, and within the room where it’s just you and your business partner. It’s so important that this happens periodically for the good of the business. That’s the high-level stuff that moves everything forward. If you’re not ahead of your people, they’re not going to know where to go.