Latest / The One Small Change Podcast / Make Room for the Life Your Business Was Meant to Support

Transcript

Make Room for the Life Your Business Was Meant to Support · The One Small Change Podcast

0:00
Welcome to The One Small Change. I am thrilled that you embarked on
0:04
this journey of exploration and transformation with me. I'm your host,
0:07
Yvonne McCoy, and I bring almost 30 years of entrepreneurial experience, and I
0:11
have an incredible passion for discovering growth
0:15
through the power of seemingly small change. And I want to thank you
0:19
for joining me on this entrepreneurial journey. And I try to bring
0:23
somebody new and different to you every week. But last week and this
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week, I decided I had a lot to say, and rather than try to squeeze
0:30
it in over somebody else, I decided that I would talk
0:34
about it myself. So, I'm really
0:38
happy that you're here. I'm glad if you survived the
0:41
last episode that you came back for more.
0:45
Here's the thing. 8 months have gone by, and we
0:49
talked about a lot of the things that we learned, that
0:53
clarity needs refinement, confidence needs action,
0:57
consistent needs to be repeat, something that's repeatable.
1:01
But knowing all that doesn't change anything, because learning without
1:05
applying it is just entertainment. And so,
1:08
what I want to say to you is, we have 4 months left of the
1:11
year. My question is not, what else can I
1:15
add? It's, what can I do less of? What
1:19
deserves more of my attention? And is there a new
1:22
thing that's worth trying? Because September is back
1:26
to school for our kids and most of the world in some form or
1:30
another, you know, whether you're working a job as a teacher. But for
1:34
us, it's kind of back to business energy. But that doesn't mean that we
1:37
have to go back to being just busy. So the first thing I want us
1:41
to take a look at is less.
1:45
Being good at something can keep you stuck. This is an
1:49
idea that I really want to keep. And, you know, if
1:53
you find the 4 Levels of Genius, that comes up
1:56
into one of the things that you can do extremely well,
2:01
and that's part of the problem. Competence can become really
2:05
comfortable. You can do it well, and so it's
2:08
one of the first things you go to. We keep doing the things that we're
2:12
good at, but being good at something doesn't mean that it's the
2:15
best use of our time and our energy. Just because I can
2:19
do something doesn't mean that I should be doing it, and I have to
2:23
tell you, I learned this lesson
2:27
In a really harsh way in November when I fell and
2:31
got a concussion. Some of you know me from the Sunday Scoop,
2:36
and I used to spend almost all day on that newsletter trying
2:39
to get the information and the links to work and all that kind of stuff.
2:43
So, maybe I wasn't all that good at it, but I liked doing it.
2:47
And so, one of the first things that happened is I had to decide whether
2:51
or not that was something that I wanted to keep.
2:55
Was it serving me? What was the purpose of it? Okay.
2:59
And one of the things that I decided— people said to me, you know, you're
3:02
not making any money from it. You should just let it go. But for me,
3:06
it served 2 purposes. One was that it was a
3:10
way for me to be able to reach out when I was networking and
3:13
have something that I could offer to people and say, hi, this is like a
3:17
first step to working together. So in terms of collaboration, it was
3:21
a really good tool. 2, it exposed
3:25
my audiences to other opportunities and other
3:28
events aside from mine. And so to me, it was worth keeping. And I
3:32
said, how can I do this? And the way that I did it
3:36
with the help of a coach was we set up a form so
3:39
people could take the responsibility of submitting their
3:43
information themselves, right? I didn't,
3:47
you know, the VA took it and I put it in the format that I
3:50
want. Yes, I still fiddle with it. Mm-hmm. More than I should,
3:54
but it now takes me about an hour as opposed to
3:58
when it used to take me 4 or 5 hours before.
4:03
So just because you're doing it because you've always done it doesn't mean
4:06
you can't get the same results by either not doing
4:10
it and, you know, or doing it a different way.
4:15
So you may decide you want to stop. You may decide you want
4:19
to simplify. You may decide you want to automate it, you,
4:22
you know, or delegate it, or do some of them, you know, all of them.
4:26
But, but here's another piece to this. If we're
4:30
talking about
4:33
intentional growth, one of the things I think that we
4:37
set out to do is say,
4:41
I'm going to become an entrepreneur because I want freedom, I want to do things
4:44
for my family. And yet we build a business that requires more
4:48
and more of us, right? And so we have less time for our family. And
4:52
so this is another reason, as we take a look at what
4:56
we're doing between now and the end of the year, to ask yourself,
5:01
what can I do less of so I can have more time for the life
5:04
that I'm trying to build, right? Weigh those
5:08
2 things. I think that you're going to find it an interesting
5:11
discussion to have with yourself, because like I said, just because you're
5:15
good at doing it Doesn't mean that it's the best shoes.
5:19
And if you stop doing it or find another way to get it
5:23
done, what does that leave room for?
5:28
Intentional growth is not just about what you can do. It's
5:31
about making more room for what you want to do
5:35
and helping you to show up with your unique powers and to be the
5:39
best person. And it also helps you to show
5:43
up so your clients can find you. All right, so we talked about
5:47
less. So we're going to talk about less, we're going to talk about more, we're
5:50
going to talk about new. All right, so we talked about less. What can
5:54
you— what can you get rid of, right? What can you put, you know, and
5:57
that could also be what can you put on hold? It's like, I'm gonna do
6:01
it but not now, right? You don't have to do everything at one
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time. So before you go looking for
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more, Let's see
6:12
what's working. And one of the things that I think
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we all have varying amounts of expertise
6:20
is looking for evidence of what actually
6:24
worked. And when I say looking for evidence, I'm talking about the numbers. How many
6:28
clients? How many conversations? How many referrals?
6:31
What kind of opportunities? What's the income? Energy is
6:35
hard to give a number to. But it is also
6:39
part of the equation. So you want to
6:43
ask yourself, what have I done once or twice that might work even better
6:47
if I did it consistently? So we're talking about the
6:50
things that if you post,
6:54
do you post once on a Monday and then 2 weeks later you
6:58
post on a Wednesday? If you're going to post once a week,
7:02
post on the same day and do it consistently. It makes it a lot
7:06
easier. For your clients to find you. Um,
7:11
there are lots of new strategies and tools and platforms and programs
7:15
and stuff, but you need to see what's working
7:19
right, and you need to solve the right problem so you can do more
7:23
of it. And again, I'm going to talk to you about my coach.
7:27
Um, like most of us, if you do a workshop and it
7:30
doesn't go the way you want, the first thing you think is, I'm going to
7:33
work on my slides, I'm going to work on my talk. But if you look
7:37
at the numbers, you'll see maybe I didn't have
7:40
enough people there. If I need to have, you know, I make 1 sale out
7:44
of 10 and I only had 5 people who showed up, the
7:48
workshop, the slides is not the place to go.
7:52
Getting more people to show up, what works that shows
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up? What am I doing? If I'm doing 2 things,
8:00
what's getting me the most? clients and conversations.
8:05
So one of the things I'm looking at this year is panels versus
8:09
summits. I've decided— I did 3 summits, I
8:12
really enjoyed them. I've done 2 panels. I've
8:16
gotten more people to attend panels
8:20
if you look at the work that goes in it, right, than on a
8:24
summit. So I think I'm going to do a panel every 2 months.
8:28
Right? And see how that works. That's what I'm going to do more of.
8:31
So you don't have to keep inventing, right? What you need
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to do is refining and repeating.
8:39
And this is where focus matters. If you have 5 things that
8:43
work, what's got the highest leverage for you? Which— what is the
8:47
thing that's going to bring in the most money, the most
8:50
clients, that's going to feed your soul the most?
8:54
Because I think that's the thing that you can keep doing.
8:58
You don't have to— you know, if you've got 5
9:02
things, there are definitely 1 or 2 on that list that you love doing, and
9:05
there's definitely 1 that you don't like doing. So put your
9:09
energy into the 2 things that you like doing, right?
9:13
It's really hard to spread yourself across 5 things, and that
9:17
comes when it comes to opportunities.
9:21
It sounds weird, but it's really hard to be able to
9:25
say to somebody, I don't think this is the right thing for me.
9:29
Sometimes it's really easy. I was asked to speak at an
9:32
event and it had to do with books. I don't do books,
9:36
right? I know a couple other people, I could refer to them, but books is
9:40
not my thing. So that one's easy. It's a lot
9:43
harder when it— when you haven't decided on what you're
9:47
doing. So that you can know what things to say yes
9:51
or no to, right? So ask
9:55
yourself, if I can improve only one part of your business in the next
9:58
90 days, which one would make the biggest difference?
10:02
Which one is going to leverage and get your
10:06
flywheel going so it's going to spin faster? And
10:10
what's already working that you haven't given enough time and attention and
10:14
consistency to? So, what I
10:17
want you to look at is, is,
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you know, focus isn't saying you can only have one option. It's deciding
10:26
which is the best option that deserves your time.
10:31
And that's where I'm going to come in and say, the part
10:34
that we don't do is we don't evaluate. And I'm as
10:38
guilty as the next person. And if you've been,
10:42
you know, if you've been at this for a while, we have a tendency to
10:45
try something, say it doesn't work, I'm going to try something else.
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And 2 things happen. One is, without taking a
10:53
look to see what part of it worked and didn't work,
10:57
you're throwing the bat, you know, the baby out with the bathwater. It
11:01
may be just a slight adjustment, right?
11:05
Is this the right time for the clients that I'm trying to attract?
11:09
What if I change the time? Right?
11:13
So for me, I, I never do anything on a Monday
11:16
because I just think Monday is chaos day in everybody's
11:20
life. It's, you know, if you're building your business, you've got stuff to do.
11:24
If you're working a job, you have stuff to do. It's the beginning of
11:27
the week. Monday is just a terrible day. So if you've been having your
11:31
workshop on Monday and you not— you have not been having good results,
11:35
Don't throw the whole idea out. Just try it on a different day
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and see if you get different results. And that's where it's
11:43
really important to measure, okay, what's
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going on. The other thing
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is, I call it situational awareness.
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Look at the situation that you're in. Are these, you know, the
11:59
right people at the right time on the right topic? You
12:03
don't necessarily have to change all 3 of those things, but
12:08
change one thing and see what happens, right?
12:13
All right, so that's doing more of what's working.
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And the last part is new. Now, when I say
12:22
new, there are a couple things that I want you to think about.
12:27
I'm not saying don't try anything new. Because in
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order to grow, you have to feel
12:34
uncomfortable and you have to do some experimentation.
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But there's a difference between experimenting
12:42
and continually starting over. And so that's why I said
12:46
before, do more and change something. And the other
12:50
part is make sure that you're taking a look at
12:55
what's working. So part of what happens
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is we're— we start out in our comfort level.
13:04
We need to make a change, and so we have fear, right?
13:08
We're uncomfortable. It's new. We have these thoughts, right?
13:12
From there we go, what's missing? What do I need? What am I
13:16
learning? All right, so you learn something, and then hopefully you
13:20
apply it, and that thing will give you growth.
13:24
And the only way that you're gonna know that is
13:27
if you're looking at the data. And so
13:31
if you do something new, don't
13:35
start over again. Try something new on something that you're
13:39
already doing because you've got a baseline. So for instance,
13:45
one of the things that I did with one of the
13:46
summits Was I put a teaser in the invitation, like,
13:50
if you want to jumpstart that, you know, your experience,
13:54
try this. And I had never done that
13:58
before, and it seemed like it worked. And so
14:02
I did it on the panel. And what I found was, in both
14:05
situations, I found my attendance was better.
14:09
It was a way of introducing myself and what the experience was going
14:13
to be like to people who other people had
14:17
invited. So it was a different experience from them.
14:21
So in terms of the pipeline, you've got to
14:25
get the word out there, whatever you're doing. You have to get
14:28
people to sign up. You have to get them to show up.
14:32
Hopefully you have, you know, you get them to participate and then
14:36
you get them to follow up and convert. So that's kind of
14:40
the pipeline that you're looking at. And the question is,
14:44
what's working in all those? You kind of have to start at the beginning.
14:49
What am I putting out there and is it attracting people? And
14:52
really focus on that. So if you're doing
14:56
something new, it may not be a totally new strategy.
15:00
It may be, I'm going to move the button on my landing page.
15:03
I'm going to put 2 buttons to sign up, one at the very
15:07
top, And one at the bottom. One at the top for people like,
15:11
yeah, I'm in, I don't have time to read through a whole bunch of stuff
15:14
or scroll, and one at the bottom for people like, I'm not really sure,
15:18
you know, what's going on, I need to know a little more. Alright?
15:22
When you do that, you can compare apples to apples,
15:27
right? You can look at the numbers. I put it
15:30
out there, I had X number of clicks, I had X number, I had
15:34
X number of Right, clicks. I had X number of
15:38
people who signed up,
15:42
right? One of the things we looked at, I mean, sometimes,
15:46
you know, something happens and you have a whole lot of clicks and no
15:49
signups, and it's a technical issue,
15:52
right? So you don't want to wait to the very end until the day of
15:55
your event to take a look and see, you know, as you're testing new
15:59
things, it's like, okay, I put this new
16:02
button out there. And now my signups are lower.
16:07
So first, is the button working? So you need to
16:11
test that. If the button is working, then you have a different, you know,
16:15
you're looking at a different problem. So that's, that's just, you know,
16:19
my experience and what I've done.
16:22
Okay. So
16:28
One of the ways you build confidence is not by having a perfect plan.
16:32
Like, you know, confidence is
16:36
being confident enough to say, I'm willing to do this. I'm willing to
16:40
take a risk. I've looked at the options, and this is the best one.
16:44
You don't have to know if the new thing will work in order to do
16:47
it. So, based on what you learned on the first 8 months,
16:52
what's one new thing that's worth testing before the end of the
16:56
year? And are you
17:00
ready to try it? Are you ready to feel uncomfortable
17:04
and try it? You don't have to totally know that it's going
17:08
to work, because that's what a test is. That's what an experiment is. You
17:12
just need to know that you want to be able to learn
17:16
from it. The other part to this
17:19
is, and I've mentioned this before, is you have to
17:23
measure. This is what makes this
17:29
not just an activities list. It's not just,
17:33
you know, I did less, check. I did more, check. I did
17:37
something new, check, right? It's about
17:43
what would have to happen for me to know that this worked? What's the
17:46
outcome I'm looking for? Not how many posts did I make?
17:51
Not how many networking events did I attend, not how busy was I,
17:54
but what changed. And, you know, one of the things that I say when,
17:58
you know, people are participating in my event, yes, you've
18:02
committed to doing 3 posts about the event, but what you really
18:06
committed to is bringing 20 or more,
18:09
20 or more people to the event so that we all
18:13
have a full room. If the 3 posts don't get you
18:17
that, then you need to do something else. In all
18:21
fairness to everybody else. So it's not about how busy
18:25
I am. It's, you know, did I
18:28
get more right-fit conversations? Did I
18:32
get better leads? Did I get more clients? Did I get more revenue?
18:36
Do I have more time? Is there, you know, less complexity in my life?
18:40
Right? Did my work-life balance get better?
18:45
When you're doing all these things. And one of the things that I found interesting
18:49
by measuring was, you know, we added a survey,
18:52
which makes it really easy before the workshop to, to have
18:56
data that you can measure. Is,
19:02
as I made some changes, I had a smaller amount of
19:05
people come, but a higher percentage were
19:09
more qualified. So let that sink in for me.
19:13
I mean, I find it a little, you know, I have to think about it
19:16
myself. As we made some changes based
19:20
on the survey that we got that gave us some high-quality
19:23
leads, we got a little bit
19:27
smaller attendance, but
19:31
a higher level of quality.
19:36
So then what you're asking yourself is, what do
19:40
I stop? What do I keep? What do I refine? What do I
19:44
repeat? Okay.
19:48
So let me take a breath here.
19:51
Because if you don't define the results, it's really easy
19:56
to confuse being busy with making progress. And
19:59
the results have to be your own results. I mean, everybody's got a
20:03
strategy, everybody's got a way of doing something, but you have to be—
20:07
you really need your dead reckoning to say, this is what I want my life
20:11
to look like, this is what I want my business to say. So,
20:15
you know, this is where I want to bring the survey back. So when I
20:18
did the survey, 50% of the people I surveyed said they were ready to
20:22
scale intentionally. And I want to come back to the word
20:26
intentional. Scaling intentionally doesn't mean
20:30
doing more of everything. It means deliberately deciding
20:34
what doesn't serve me anymore and do
20:38
less of that. What's working and deserves more
20:41
focus and more effort and do more of that.
20:45
What's worth testing on what I've learned.
20:49
And all through this, you need to measure. So, if you do less,
20:54
And you're measuring, has it made a difference? Has, you know,
20:58
have your numbers gone up or down? The same thing with what you're
21:01
focusing on doing more. Do the numbers
21:05
that are important to you go up or down? Okay,
21:09
which of those numbers are
21:13
really applicable? Okay, so what I
21:17
say to people, if you're not used to looking at the numbers, one of the
21:20
things that I think is really important is pick a number that's really easy for
21:22
you to get to. Mm-hmm. It may not be
21:26
a great quality number. It may not really
21:30
tell you 100% of what you're looking for, but it's someplace
21:34
that you can start looking. And then you can start asking the questions,
21:37
what does this number really mean? So if you're looking
21:41
to grow your business and intentionally scale, you
21:45
have to decide what, you know, where to put your energy,
21:49
right? And you don't want to end up
21:52
building a business
21:56
That's going to end up giving you a life you don't want, where you're
22:00
scurrying and you're, you're feeling like you're left out of things, that you're
22:03
not doing the things that you want.
22:11
So here's a couple questions that I want you to ask, or things
22:15
that you, you know, to kind of
22:19
gather this all together. Choose one thing to
22:22
stop, reduce, simplify, automate, or delegate.
22:26
Now, that one thing can be, I'm gonna stop doing this for one
22:30
month or one, you know, quarter or whatever. Just because
22:34
you stop it doesn't mean that you can never go back to it if it
22:37
turns out that you're not getting the results that you want.
22:41
Choose one thing that's already working and
22:45
commit to repeating it and doing it more. If you
22:48
are posting once a week, try posting twice a week.
22:53
If you are trying to be on
22:56
podcasts, make a goal for yourself. I
23:00
want to be on podcasts a couple of times. Now here's the thing about
23:04
that— was really not a great example unless you've got your own podcast,
23:09
because you can't control when that comes out, right? But you can
23:12
control how many you have in
23:16
the pipeline, right? And I think the one that's the most
23:20
important to me, if I had to rate
23:24
them, do less and try something new would be the way that I would
23:27
go. But I would try
23:31
something new on something that's already working so that that's
23:35
kind of like tweaking it, right? So
23:39
what result is going to tell you that it's worth
23:43
continuing. All right. So, here's the
23:47
thing. 75% of the people
23:50
that I surveyed said they wanted to make a change in 90 days. So, here's
23:54
my question. If you keep doing exactly what you're doing,
23:58
what will actually be different in 90 days? What will be different when— by the
24:02
time you get into December before you start 2027?
24:06
And maybe the harder question is, how long have you already been trying to
24:09
change that? You know, so there are a couple
24:13
options for you. If you know something needs to change, but you're not sure you're
24:16
working on the right thing, book a call with me and we'll sit and
24:20
talk about, you know, what maybe you need to do less of, what you
24:24
need to do more of, in a recognition clarity session with me.
24:28
And the other thing is we can look at what's happening, what's getting in the
24:32
way, and really what deserves your attention. Last but not
24:35
least, Don't let the energy that's here
24:39
right now, the back to business, don't let it become back to busy.
24:43
Don't keep doing what you're doing because, you know, they say
24:46
that's insanity. If you keep doing everything that you're doing, you're going to keep getting
24:50
what you got, right? And the more you
24:54
focus, the
24:58
less you need to be fixed. If you have paying clients that love you,
25:02
You don't have a service delivery issue.
25:06
You just need to be found. You have a client attraction issue.
25:11
So by doing less of some things and more of
25:14
others, you will be easier to be found by your clients.
25:20
So, um, I want you to think about that a little bit.
25:25
I said a whole lot. I had a whole lot to say to you. But
25:29
this is the last part I'm going to say to you.
25:33
One of my favorite sayings is,
25:37
it doesn't matter how fast you're going if you're going in the
25:41
wrong direction. So I'm going to loop back to the first,
25:45
you know, the last week's episode about clarity.
25:49
Take some time to really think about the life that you want and the
25:53
business that you want. Right. In the
25:56
meantime, be sure you subscribe and share and
26:00
engage on social media about the podcast. One of the reasons that I
26:04
did it is so that I could supercharge your business and add
26:07
connection to it. So you guys know me, so feel
26:11
free to share with somebody in your community and expand the
26:15
community. And I'm hoping that there are ideas
26:18
that are going to help you In your quest for growth
26:22
and impact. And it can be the smallest
26:26
change that can yield monumental transformation. And
26:30
this is not the first time I've done individual episodes, so there are a few
26:33
out there. And like I said, you know, it doesn't matter how
26:37
fast you're going if you're going in the wrong direction. So
26:41
remember, change is simple. It's not always easy. It
26:44
requires courage and resilience and a willingness to step outside your
26:48
comfort zone. And sometimes that can be scary. So I hope you'll
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continue to join me for The One Small Change as we embark on this
26:55
journey of a bold vision and innovative possibilities.
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And until then, join me on one of my workshops, give me a
27:03
call. And until the next time,
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stay very, very curious.
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Thank you.