Pam: You’re listening to the flourish and grow to CEO podcast. This is episode seven.

Are you a lady boss making $50k to $100k in your business? And you’re ready to break through that six figure barrier.

Jane: Have you done a great job of creating a nice life as the ultimate gig master, but no, your inner CEO is calling you to greater Heights. You’re in the right place. If you want to create and implement solid fundamentals in your business without sacrificing fun.

Pam: I’m Pam Ivey, I’m certified in small business management and I concentrate in the areas of training and certifying real estate assistance, coaching and mentoring entrepreneurs in online business, marketing growth and profit acceleration. And I take men and women business owners aged 40 plus two bucket list destinations around the world for a month at a time to work, explore, and live in community.

Jane: And I’m Jane Garee, known as the sales strategist for the non-sales person. And I work with business owners who want to increase their conversion rate, shorten their sales cycle and have more impact and influence with the work they do all while having more.

Pam: Hey, everyone, welcome back. So glad to have you here. As you know, we kind of decided to focus on sales last week because there was so much awesome information that Jane gave us. Hey Jane. Hey Pam. Hey everyone. How are you doing today? Good. Awesome. So leadership and team leadership and team are going to focus on and it’s a biggie too. So I think it is good that we’ve broken it out into a separate podcast. So let’s jump right in. Are you ready? I’m ready. Awesome. So leadership, you know, running a successful business when poised for growth, what we’re definitely going after, no matter how big or small it is, it starts and ends with effective leadership. This involves defining a clear destination, getting everyone focused on reaching that destination, informing inspiring, and engaging people to get their measuring results and making adjustments as necessary along the way.

And when I say getting everyone focused, that could be a team. It could be just you. So you got to get yourself focused. So you’ve got to get really clear on winning on your vision. What we spoke about in a previous episode on vision and strategy as a business, without a clear destination, you know, either you have too many destinations or none at all. That’s why the first task of every leader, regardless of the size or type of their business, is to define and paint a crystal clear vision of what winning looks like for your business and what it’ll take you to get there. So with fewer people and less resources, obviously small businesses find it easier to get clear on winning. The bigger challenge comes from staying focused on the destination because these entrepreneurs us included. I know you can relate to this too, Jane.

We tend to see opportunity everywhere. And we often fear that missing even one could negatively impact the business, right? Oh my gosh. True entrepreneur is we have a new idea a minute. So just try to keep this in mind that just because an opportunity is within your reach or an idea pops into your head, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s going to serve you well. So it may be a great idea. It may be bad timing or not the right timing for you. So don’t be upset that you’re not going to pursue it, have some sort of a notebook, um, something, a file on your computer, just jot down those ideas. So you lose them, but you don’t necessarily have to pursue them today. Although I always feel like I should. So I’ve really got to take heed with this stuff too. But I think the biggest point that we have to get across is as a leader, you’re the person that has to set the vision and the direction of the company.

Jane: Yeah, this is really, this is really important. If you can’t get up every day and truly be the leader of your own life, it’s going to be hard to set the direction for anybody. You’ve got to be able to do that for you first.

Pam: We were talking about that the other day, right Jane? It’s not just leadership of the company, but it’s leadership of yourself. Usually important. I think one of the biggest challenges for small business owners and personally it staying focused to minimize the constant demands on your attention from people and the daily deluge of emails, texts, tweets, Facebook pings start each morning by taking 10 minutes to review the day ahead, I’ve started to do this and it’s really made a big impact in my business. And just kind of my sanity ask yourself of the stuff that I have planned today. What’s going to get me closer to my definition of winning or my vision, and then organize your day around those tasks and activity that really move you closer to your goals. Well, eliminating the things that clutter, your time, your attention and your brain stay focused. Keep your people on track. If you have them, if not keep you on track, provide regular performance feedback and help them grow professionally. And when I keep saying them, I mean you, if you’re just a solopreneur at the moment, too, and if you really do that, you keep focused. It won’t be long before your small business becomes bigger and even more successful.

Jane: Yeah. The leadership thing is key. It is everything. It’s really a mindset. It’s a CEO mindset and just a healthy can do. I’ve got what it takes to make this mindset. That’s what we use that as our first foundational pillar, because without that mindset, everything else it’s going to kind of come in secondary. You got to get your mindset going first. So leadership is really just about a CEO mindset. Lead yourself first step up and into becoming the leader of your own life. Now think about this because this really does require some intentional thought process here. Where do you want to go? Who do you want to be? What kind of business are you wanting to create? This is important because if not everything else that you’re going to do, that’s kind of practical and tactical is going to experience a disconnect. And when the disconnect happens, you’re out of alignment.

When you’re out of alignment, you’re going to start self-sabotaging. The self-sabotaging will show up pretty quickly. If you’re out of alignment, which means you’re just disconnected to the leadership mindset that you really need to have. So spend some time thinking about where do you want to go? What kind of business do you want to build? And this is the most important one. Who do you want to be? You know, Jim Rohn had a quote years and years ago that the first time I read it, I thought I’m going to remember this for the rest of my life. And it was this, he talked about when people would come up to him and say, Hey, how does it feel to be a millionaire? And he would respond and say, it feels really great to be a millionaire. Actually, he was probably a multimillionaire, but it feels really great to be a millionaire multimillionaire, but what feels even better is what I had to do to become the person who was able to become a millionaire or multimillionaire.

And I always remember that because that’s really what it is. There’s a tendency for us to think I’ve got to go do these things that make money, or my focus needs to be on bringing in the income or making the millions. So the focus is outward and external, but what Jim Rowan was really saying, which is so incredibly true is you have to be calm, the kind of person who can then go make the millions of dollars. You have to become the kind of person that can go serve people at a very high level so that you’re putting your work out there in a way that’s having an impact and influence on other people. So where do you want to go? Yes. Think about that. What kind of business do you want to build? Of course, think about that, but really spend some time thinking who do I want to be and who do I need to be to get what I want in my life

Pam: Really well said. That’s for sure. And leadership in terms of all the pillars, it’s all interconnected, right? Just like every other pillar that we talked about, depends on all the other pillars. Leadership really manages the whole picture. So your inner game, your vision, your branding and messaging, your marketing sales, your team and your operations.

Jane: That’s what interconnectedness we keep talking about because when you’re stepping into the leadership role and you’re leading your own life, you’re able to run that through everything. Is my leadership supporting the strategy is my leadership supporting this vision. Is it creating the vision? Is my leadership supporting and preparing for the tactics that I’m going to need to employ is my leadership, allowing me to become the kind of leader I need to be for my team. So that interconnectedness is it’s so incredibly key to being successful.

Pam: Yeah. Maybe we focus a little bit on the interconnectivity because we were talking about it yesterday. So many people either teach the tactics or they’ll teach you about the business foundations. But I, I think our kind of secret sauce is that we really want you to understand how each of these foundational pillars work with each other, they’re inter connected and they’re all dependent on each other. And when you have them a really strong foundation, that’s, you know, each of those pillars is supporting the other, you’re in an awesome position to create a really successful business and one that you can scale to grow. Absolutely true. All right. So why don’t we jump into team? Let me just say that in order to really grow your business, at some point, you’re going to have to bring on help. And for many of that, it’s going to be virtual because we’re either not going to have the space in our homes or really just don’t want to take on that responsibility of an employee and virtual assistants can be awesome.

Let me tell you, because you know, I was sweating, but here’s some really good indicators that you need help. When do I know it’s time, here’s some indications. So your business needs some skills that you just don’t have. You’re missing family events because you’re working 24 hours a day. You wish you could clone yourself. How many times have we said that? So many times, I just wish there was two of me. You spend more time on administration than the core of your business itself, whether it be a coach or consultant you’re ready to scale, you know, that it’s time to grow. You’ve been moving that project around your desk for the last six months. You haven’t dived into it. Is that the right vernacular? You haven’t dived in yet. I guess you just keep moving it because you haven’t had time to get to that project.

Those are really good indications that it’s time to bring on help. So just to make this really tactical for you, here’s a way that you can figure out what to bring on help for first. So those first few projects, or they could be ongoing. What I’m going to ask that you do is close your computer. Not as you’re listening to this podcast, if you’re listening to it on a computer, but when you’re ready, sit down, close your computer, shut off your phone, whatever it is, just get the distractions away from you. Get a notebook and write down every single task that you do on a day-to-day basis. Every single thing, things like answering emails, taking phone calls, posting on social media, I mean everything. And once you feel confident that you’ve written down every single task, take that list and order them from easiest to hardest.

Now, the easiest are usually the most repetitive and mundane, and those could really easily be handled by someone else with the experience within that task. Once all the items on that list are ordered. Look at the tasks that you’ve placed at the top of the list. These are the first tasks that you should hire for easy-peasy. And I just want you to keep in mind, you’re working on tasks too simple for your pay rate. And what I mean by that is it would cost you far less to outsource or hire help for that than it would cost you or someone would pay you per hour for your time. Does that make sense, Jane?

Jane: Absolutely. This was such an eye-opening exercise for me because when I wrote down everything that I didn’t like to do, and then I wrote down everything that I really didn’t need to do. I had a pretty substantial list of items that I could there. Then four, I could then four, I could then therefore outsource and it made a really big difference in my business. Once I was able to hire people to do the things that I didn’t like and to do the things that I just, I didn’t need to be doing personally, it freed up so much time for me to go in and do the things that really only I can do, which not coincidentally are the things that I love doing on the things that were really revenue, generating activities.

Pam: I think that’s really key the things that you love doing

Jane: They’re really good at and the things that will generate revenue because you have to have that for a business.

Pam: Absolutely. Here are some places that you can find a virtual assistant AvailaVA.com. That’s A V I L A V A.com. You can take a look at Upwork, Fiverr, TopTal that’s T O P T A L – and that generally is higher level people like programmers and designers, freelancer.com, who’s been around forever, and PeoplePerHour.

So, those are some of the places that you can find contractors that you can work with that can help take on some of these tasks that you’ve identified. We’ve mentioned before Jane and I, that this podcast would certainly not be in existence today. Had we not outsourced and hired help to really help us pull this all together. There’s a lot of technology involved in a podcast, and while we’re really good at technology, it would take forever to figure it out. So we bit the bullet, we hired a team, they are freaking fantastic, and I’m telling you it’s so worth it.

So, I know this episode was short and sweet, but hopefully we gave you some tactical things that you can actually jump into and choosing what to hire for first. And then really get you thinking about leadership. Maybe, you know, as a tactic today or something you can jump in with is use that vision and strategy in conjunction with your leadership to really get clear on the direction of where you want to go. What are your goals and your vision for the business? What do you think, Jane? I think that sounds great. All right. Well that wraps up another episode of flourish and grow to CEO. If you are enjoying this podcast, please do subscribe review, and you can find the show notes@flourish.biz. That’s F L O U R I S h.biz B I Z (or Zed for those of us in Canada. )

Until next week, we’re going to wish you an a fantastic week and we’ll talk to you soon.

Jane: Bye everybody.