Flourish and Grow

Who Are You As a Business Owner? Know Yourself to Grow a Better Business - EP. 2

Having a deep knowledge of who you are, how you are naturally wired and understanding what your core values are, all are essential to obtaining success as a business owner. Your best chance at having a thriving business is when you embrace your core strengths, work in your zone of genius and honor what matters most to you.Pam Ivey talks about learning to understand productivity rhythm and unique skills so you don’t mimic other people and instead, create and run a business that works for you. Jane Garee discusses how people are uniquely wired as visionaries or implementers and why both are necessary for a successful business. In today’s episode, we will talk about: [00:28] - Identifying your productivity rhythm and skills to maximize results: Pam and Jane share their thoughts on the importance of understanding your personal rhythms and skills to improve productivity and get better results without sacrificing your sleep. [03:35] - Are you more visionary or implementer: both are very much needed in a business and you should know how to use the advantages of one and the other to achieve your business’ goals. [12:30] - Find your avoidance mechanism and work around it: default stress or avoidance mechanisms can get you into some tricky rabbit-holes so it is key to identify what they look like to you and how to get out of them. [16:53] - The importance of finding who you are as a business woman and how to build a successful business around that. Any doubts or comments on these topics? We would love to chat with you over our Facebook group! We are grateful to listen to your perspectives over on Instagram too, so make sure you subscribe to this podcast for upcoming episodes next week!Connect with us: www.instagram.com/flourishandgrowtoceo https://www.facebook.com/groups/flourishandgrowtoceo Determine if you're ready to grow your business and how strong your foundations truly are at: https://flourish.biz/quizEPISODE 2 TRANSCRIPTIONPam: (00:01) This is episode two of the Flourish and Grow to CEO podcast.Pam: (00:28) In today's episode, we're going to talk about knowing yourself to grow a better business, understanding who you are as a business owner. So let us ask you this. Who are you as a business owner? No, there's no need to sit in a darkened room with incense chanting. Ohm. You know, trying to get in touch with your inner self instead, keep it practical and start with the basics. Are you an early bird or a night owl? Do you naturally function better in the evenings or the mornings? I know for me like ipso, facto, I get my best ideas at midnight. What about you, Jane?Jane: (01:11) Yeah, I'm definitely geared more towards being a night owl. These people who get up at five and six in the morning, I think they're amazing. I'm really impressed by them. But if I'm up at five or six in the morning, it's probably because I haven't been to bed since the night before. So evenings are much more of a sweet spot for me. Well, one of my really close friends, she gets up between four and five in the morning. And I tell her, I am going to call her to say good night to her when she gets up, I'm on the same page with you there. But you know, something as simple as really recognizing and honoring your particular rhythms can be the difference between having a business that is starting to pick up momentum or is starting to grow from previous momentum and enjoying it and feeling like you're just dragging yourself to make everything in your business, move forward with any kind of momentum.Pam: (02:02) So for me, it took me years before I stopped beating myself up for not being one of the people who gets up at 6:00 AM and accomplishes more by 9:00 AM than what most people do all day. And I just always felt so terrible about it. And I would, I would say, well, maybe I'm not cut out to run a business and maybe I just can't do it because maybe I'm inherently lazy because I really don't like getting up until at least eight 30 sometimes honestly nine. But what I realized is one of the beauties of self-employment is I really can run my schedule and I really can work the hours that are best suited to me being productive and happy. Exactly. You don't have to conform to quote unquote norms. So think about what your key skills are too. So be honest with yourself here. Are you strong in math? Maybe. Can you manipulate language? Are you good at persuasion? Do you function better? When everything around you is ordered and tidy or with everything at your fingertips, even if it's a bit messy, do you make business decisions based on gut feelings? Now just know that none of these are right and wrong right or wrong, but really this self knowledge will help you better understand urinate skills. So let's talk about some other things that can help us better understand who we are and how we can best run our business. One of the things that Jane and I have been talking about lately is understanding if you are part-to-whole or whole-to-part. And I wonder Jane, if you could explain.Jane: (03:35) Yeah, absolutely. This was one of those key concepts that when I truly grasp it and began to implement it into not just my business, but my life, it created a whole lot of really positive change. So here's the definition of hold apart in park, the whole, uh, hold apart person. So we're saying whole W-H-O-L-E to part P-A-R-T three words, whole-to-parts, a whole-two-part person is someone who very quickly and easily is able to see the big vision of something. The picture, the 30,000 foot view, if you will, this is somebody who, if we use the analogy of a house, they're able to say, Oh, I to see my little mini French cottage or my French shot toe, and it's in a wooded area and it's on a Lake and it's X amount of stories and it's in this kind of driveway and these kinds of colors and the whole entire picture is there the next piece though, to be able to make any vision a reality is you've got to break it down into manageable and implementable steps, and those would be the parts.Jane: (04:40) So in general, when people are more geared to see the whole of something, it can be a bit more challenging for them to break anything down into implementable actions, steps in some kind of sequential order that would actually complete what is needed to be completed to achieve the vision or the hole. So that's a whole-to-part person. These are your visionaries. These are people who can describe to you in amazingly great detail, an idea, a concept. And when I say detail, the detail of the imagery, the detail, and the ability to evoke emotional responses, these are motivational types of speakers. Usually they inspire others to do things. That's a whole-to-part person on the flip side, when you have a part that's a whole personality, that's more predominantly part to whole. You are very, very good at seeing what needs to happen now and then next and then next, and then next in order to get to the vision.Jane: 05:41 So the strength for someone who is a part-to-whole person is these are your implementers. They can listen to an idea and go get out of my way. I know what needs to happen next. And they can come up with an entire action plan that is implementable, that they could actually show someone else how to do. These are the people who get the stuff done. So that is their strength. What can sometimes be challenging for them is they get so involved in the next step. Next step, next step, that they can lose sight of the end division, the end game. What are we actually headed towards? And are we going to achieve those results? So whole-to-part quick starts usually have the big picture and can struggle to get anything completed, hard to hold people, masters at getting stuff done, but sometimes it can get a little wonky or out of alignment with what the original vision was.Jane: (06:31) The reason why this is so important is when you understand how you predominantly operate, you can surround yourself and, or hire others to pick up the part that no pun intended to pick up the other, the opposite of who you are now. I want it. I want to say something really important about this Pam, because when I have explained this before or taught this really interesting, the people who are part of the whole tend to get a little defensive and say, well, I'm a visionary, but I am a visionary. And I say, of course, you're a visionary. Of course you are. Otherwise you wouldn't have a business. And the people who are more, more whole-to-part tend to get a little defensive and say, well, I do finish stuff I do implement. And I say, of course you do. Otherwise, you wouldn't have a business. So all of us have an element of both in here. However, you need to be able to clearly identify what you are naturally geared to do and how you're predominantly going to operate, because really all of us are more one than the other. So once you can identify that you can get the support that you need for the other part of it.Pam: (07:37) Exactly. I know I'm definitely that 30,000 foot view gal, a big picture gal. And I really have a hard time. I can do it, but I do have a hard time breaking it down into each step that needs to happen in order to create that big vision.Jane: (07:54) Right? I'm the exact same way. I see stuff all the time. I start stuff all the time and it can be really challenging for me to reach completion. Same thing. Yes, I can do it. And it was a real relief for me to realize I can do it and I can make myself do it. And when it's really important to me and I'm, I want to do it. And I'm kind of in flow because there are some things that are in flow, then yes, I can do it. But for the most part, it would better serve me. And it would better serve my business. If I got the idea sketched out for somebody else to then start to implement example, JanePam: (08:34) And I in this podcast, because we're such, you know, we're both visionaries. We both see the big picture. We never would have gotten this off the ground without our teams.Jane: (08:45) So, yeah. And in fact, let's spill a little dirty laundry here really for several months. And by several, I mean, nearly a year, we tossed idea after idea, right? You and I did, we're going to do this. We're going to do that. We'll make it look this way. We'll make it look that way. And we really weren't getting anything off the ground. And then it was really at the moment that you said, you know what, why don't we do podcasts? Because it's more vision focused. It's more kind of in the moment if you will. And what if we hired people to do behind the scenes stuff. And then of course, that's exactly what we did. And just everything kind of took on a life of its own. So that is the very real Testament of identify what you're most geared to do, what you're most likely to do and get the support that you need from the opposite strengths.Pam: (09:35) Yeah. Or you wouldn't be listening to this right now. I'm just saying...Jane: (09:39) Totally covered up with all our great ideas and say, meet next week. What else are we going to create?Pam: (09:44) We met religiously. We were really dedicated, but we weren't seeing anything through to completion. And it's so interesting because I learned that one of my heroes, Richard Branson of Virgin. He’s a complete visionary. He's the big idea guy, but he never could follow through. So that's why he's the one that comes up with the ideas. And he has what he calls quote unquote, finishers, come in and implement and see his vision through.Jane: (10:17) Yes, yes. Finishers, I think, are just angels on earth. They actually, without them, nothing would get done. And it, to be fair, if finishers didn't have a vision to break down into parts so they could implement, then nothing would get done. So that's really why both types of people are necessary. And why, regardless of which one you are, you're going to need the other piece. So I've got a very dear friend who is a heart to hole. He is amazing. It's amazing what he can come up with. He creates gorgeous architecture and sets and arts, and it's unbelievable what he can actually create and what he will get finished. And then sometimes it's just a little bit challenging because it will be, but we were gonna head here with this. This was the original vision. Oh yeah. I got to go back and look at that again and tighten it up. So we're all needed and we're all necessary.Pam: (11:07) And it's not to say that one is better than the other either. I really want to stress that. Absolutely not. We have a mutual friend who we both really admire and she's super successful doing nearly some figures if she hasn't hit it yet, she is definitely an implementation check. Yeah. Yeah. So there is no right or wrong, really take that away from this. But understanding what strength you have, which side do you tend to, will really help you to get a partner or admin support, maybe a virtual assistant or a team to help you where you're not as strong. That's all. Yep. You got it. Cool. You know, another thing that's really, really important in understanding who you are to grow your, to really make that business sustainable is understanding your default stress. And this is something you and I, again, figured out while we've been working on flourish over all these months.Jane: (12:05) Yeah. This is also telling you about the value of getting into business with somebody you trust somebody you genuinely enjoy as a person and the ability for both people to have these grownup conversations when things are going well, or there's a different definition from each person about what should be happening or what has already happened. So absolutely. So the whole understanding of your default stress. So you want to share with them what yours is. Yeah.Pam: (12:34) My avoidance mechanism as we call it as well, the understanding or default stress is definitely, I get busy if I can get into busy-ness. I feel like I'm getting somewhere, even though oftentimes it's taking me nowhere, I'll tell you, I love to research. Oh my God. But those rabbit holes, I could be there all day. I blink and it's dinner time and I haven't got anything.Jane: (13:00) Yeah. I remember when we were going through this because mine is the other one, which is planning. Your default stress is usually they're going to get busy doing or get busy planning and mine's planning. So I was having a ball over here with my different highlighters and my multi-colored pens and color coordinated, everything and mapping it all out. But really that is an avoidance mechanism of doing anything, just like getting busy for the sake of being busy. So that you're feeling a sense of accomplishment is an avoidance mechanism for needing the strategy in place. First. It definitely created an interesting situation where I'm thinking, but I'm really busy planning. I think you were thinking, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm really busy doing. And the reality was there just nothing was kind of happening. Although both of us felt like we were working on something. Exactly.Pam: (13:49) And then we both came to each other. Like, I feel like I'm working harder than you.Jane: (13:56) That was the grownup conversation though. Really? We didn't certainly didn't say it in those words, but we did have that conversation and that's how we figured out, Oh my God, I get into busy work and you get into planning. So I thought that was, I mean, that was a big light bulb moment for me,Jane: (14:13) Huge for me too, because the person that gets busy doing they're naturally going to feel, which I know is what you felt. You shared it with me is I'm working harder than you. And really you could make an argument that in fact you were cause you were doing work. And I really wasn't doing work per se. It was more the strategy, but that was moving us forward. Your work wasn't really moving us forward. And neither really was all my strategizing because there was no implementation. So it's this delicate dance for some of you, you're probably thinking, yeah, I get busy taking action and I start doing, and then it kind of all blows up. Cause I'm not really sure where I'm headed or I changed my mind. And then for those of you who get busy with the strategy and planning, you think, wow, I spent a lot of time coming up with a lot of plans that never see the delight today.Jane: (14:58) So revising what's your default stress. If you're a true solopreneur and you don't have a team yet, or you don't have a business partner, it's going to be easier to course correct. As long as you become very vigilant about making sure you're noticing if you're in your default stress, if you already have a team, then you're going to need to have a conversation about this is what I need. And then certainly if you have a business partner you're going to have to have those grown up conversations, come to Jesus. I think you really have to look at it now. Hopefully, you know, some people are going, Oh my God. Yeah, I do busy work or I do planning. What are you avoiding? What are you using? This stuff that you're doing, the planning or the busy work to procrastinate from. So what did it feel like for you, Pam, when you were busy doing it now in hindsight, what do you think you were trying to avoid and why? Oh, good question. Thank you to this round of stump, your business partner.Pam: (16:01) There was a little bit of a fear of failure in there. Yeah. Yeah. So if I'm really being honest, I was fearful that we weren't going to get enough of an audience around. We took a big how to launch your program course together. And I don't know, I was really nervous about it. So I wonder if that's what I was kind of avoiding. Yeah. Yeah. I know for me, mine usually stems back to, it's not going to be good enough. The work isn't going to be good enough, which ultimately same thing, because we were wanting to be really transparent with everything it turns into. I'm not good enough. So when I'm defaulting to let me create the plan, let me create the strategy and it's code for. Cause I don't want to do the work is that if the work is finished and they have to get put out there and if it gets out there and people can look at it and judge me, which is too, Ooh, it's not good enough. Therefore I'm not good enough. Well thatPam: (16:53) A topic for a whole other episode, man. That's inner game and we're totally going to be covering that in great detail in upcoming episodes. For sure. That's going to be some good stuff there. That's for sure. You know, something else that you should look about, you know, understanding who you are is really understanding what lights you up and then what drains you to, yeah, that's a really big deal. And again, we've, we've mentioned a few unintentional key phrases today, but grown up having the grownup conversations, sometimes the grownup conversation is with yourself, understanding who you are and the delicate dance of lots of stuff, the delicate dance of the conversations you have with yourself, the delicate dance of...

Inaugural Episode: Gigmasters, Solopreneurs and CEOs - EP. 1

Welcome to the Flourish & Grow to CEO Podcast! We’re so glad that you’ve joined us in our journey to create this show, a long-time dream for us both.In this, our inaugural episode, we focus on a problem women entrepreneurs often face when trying to build a scalable business. That is the step of going from solopreneur to a CEO with a business growth mindset that allows them to grow their business. SHOW NOTESWe met in 2018 Lisbon, Portugal on a month-long coworking trip through my company, Adventurous Life, and hit it off instantly. The next year, Jane joined Adventurous Life on another trip, this time to Australia, and we knew we had to work together.Having had personal experience with the challenges that arise when a business doesn’t have strong foundations, we knew that we had to share what we had learned, both our successes and our failures so that other business owners could create sustainability and ultimately, scale and leverage for maximum profitability and impact.Most small business owners simply don’t have comprehensive foundations created for their business, and more importantly, they don’t understand how these foundations must interconnect and work cohesively together. This supportive structure is imperative if you want to run your business like a CEO, instead of what we call a “GigMaster”, meaning you work from gig to gig- and this is the difference between you running your business or having a business that runs you.Over the last year, we’ve been working on a program for women entrepreneurs, aged 50+ (because we are), who are currently making in the $50-100k range in their business and are finding the break-through to the six-figure mark elusive.After spending much of 2020 collaborating on how we wanted to serve the coaching and consulting community, we realized we were in our own start and stop pattern because we were doing the very thing that causes a business to stall – we were trying to create a business by executing in fragmented tactics, rather than looking at our business as a whole with interconnected strategies. It was then that we decided to be more deliberate in defining the vision for our company, create the strategy and then outline the tactics that needed to be implemented that would drive us toward our vision. Our vision is ensuring that no business owner should have to live with the chaos and unpredictable income like a gig master when there is an opportunity to step into the leadership position of the CEO who runs a predictable and profitable company!This is how the podcast was born. We both love rich conversations that offer something of value, and we are passionate about sharing useful information. We also both love to entertain and hope that by offering some levity and light-heartedness, people will realize that although building a business can be tough, it’s important to have a sense of humor and resilience about it all.We welcome your comments, questions and suggestions as you listen to episodes of the show and we hope you take away helpful nuggets you can use in your own business to scale and grow to CEO.In this, our inaugural episode, we talk about:A common recurrent business problem: why being a Business Owner is so challenging and the one thing that no one really teaches you but is fundamental to business success.The gig-master trap: why just getting clients isn’t enough and how to set yourself up as the CEO of your business so you have more time and make more money. Pam shares her personal experience with this.Starting a business is like building a home: you can’t think about the details before building its foundations. Understanding the 8 pillars and how without those in place, your business is always going to struggle.Today we discuss: [02:19] The gig-master trap: why just getting clients isn’t enough, and how to set yourself up as the CEO of your business, so you have more time and make more money. Pam shares her personal experience with this.[05:55] What does it take to start a business with solid foundations?: from the reasons behind starting your own business to the questions you need to ask yourself before you even start. [09:49] Starting a business is like starting a house: you can’t think about the details before building its foundations. It’s important to understand the 8 pillars of this foundation and how without those in place, your business is always going to struggle. [11:54] The struggle of not having order in your business: by starting to line the details before building any foundations, everything we do will lack vision and, therefore, be a hopeless effort to sustain an inefficient system.[16:25] The benefits of being CEO of your own business: there are many, but the greatest is getting the satisfaction that we are providing good to other people with the job we do by creating jobs and offering solutions people need.Connect with us: www.instagram.com/flourishandgrowtoceo https://www.facebook.com/groups/flourishandgrowtoceo Determine if you're ready to grow your business and how strong your foundations truly are at: https://flourish.biz/quizEPISODE 1 TRANSCRIPTIONPam (00:20): Are you a lady boss making 50 to a hundred thousand in your business, and you're ready to break through that six figure barrier.Jane (00:27): Have you done a great job of creating a nice life as the ultimate gig masker, but your inner CEO is calling you to greater Heights. Well, you're in the right place if you want to create and implement solid fundamentals in your business without sacrificing fun.Pam (00:42): I'm Pam Ivey. I'm certified in small business management and I concentrate in the areas of online courses, training, and marketing.Jane (00:52): And I am Jane Garee, known as the sales strategist for the non-salesperson. I work with successful growth oriented business owners, so they can hear slightly less “I can't afford it” or “I'll have to think about it” in their strategy sessions and consultations, and start hearing more “How do we get started?” Hey Pam.Pam (01:11): Hey Jane, how are you doing?Jane (01:13): I'm doing great. How about you?Pam (01:15): Excellent. I'm so excited that this is our inaugural episode, so we're totally going to be making mistakes and that's okay. I think the really cool thing is we got started.Jane (01:27): It is the really cool thing that we got started. And yes, I loved our little preamble there where we were kind of ingest going unique, New York, the rain in spade, you know, warming up our voices. I've got the coffee, which you're never supposed to drink because it's got cream. And then I also have water, but it's sparkling, which you never really should drink when you're speaking because of the fizz, you know, it might go up your nose and...Pam (01:54): Well, that's it for me. Cause you know, I'm like totally addicted to diet Coke, but you know, I really wanted to let the listeners know why we've created Flourish and Grow to CEO. So we see so many women struggling to create consistent income in their business, and many are running it like a hobby. And I know you like to say gig masters, and I wonder if you could just explain that to our listeners gig master.Jane (02:19): So, this really hit me a while ago when it came to my own business, because what I had discovered is that I had done an amazingly great job of creating a business that was really back to back to back to back to back gigs. What I mean by that is I have, and I've had for a while, I have income, I have consistent income. I have really nice, consistent income. And I've created this for myself that I happen to adore. It allows me to go do the things that I want to do and have the things that I want to have and serve the people that I want to serve and et cetera, et cetera. However, what I really noticed when I started working with one of my mentors and new coach was that my business was this back to back to back to back to back gig.So, I would get business. I would serve those clients. I would get that income and I would rinse and repeat. When I started looking at things more strategically, specifically through a lens of financial strategy, I realized, Holy guacamole, I am not running my business like a CEO. I am not making financial decisions through a big picture or to support the bigger vision. Really what I've done. A great job of doing is getting clients, serving them really well, delivering excellence. So they have the results they want. They pay me. And I go do that again. So a good master does not make a business. So I kind of defined gig master as you're in a great position, you've got money coming in. You're not worried about paying the bills. You've created a nice life and you have clients and you know how to get clients, but there's really, it's like a quilt.There's no central theme. There's no overarching premise there where I do this business for this reason, with these projections, with this concept for, so I get these results. The results were actually just to continue to make money, not a bad thing, but that's actually not a complex and comprehensive strategy. So gig master is for anyone. If you're hearing, if you're listening to us right now, you might feel like you're a gig master sort of, you know, you're a gig master right? Remember that old Jeff Foxworthy thing. Master, if you get up and hustle with heart every day, you go figure out how to get clients. You do a great job. You land them, you serve them, you get paid and then that's your formula. And you go do that. You also are probably a gig master. If you're wondering, do I have reserves in my business bank account? Can I use those reserves? Why? And when do I want to use those reserves? That would be a tell that you're a gig master. Another way to tell if you're a gig master is when you look at a one year, two year or certainly anything further out plan. There's really no plan other than let me make sure I keep getting clients, let me make sure I keep making money.Pam (05:08): So it's definitely a time for money thing, right? Trading your time for money. And you're continually having to get new clients continually.Jane (05:19): Yeah. So any business is going to have to continually get new clients, but there's a big difference, but the strategy of a business and how we're going to get clients, retain clients, create sustainable growth. And what are we going to do today for, for income.Pam (05:35): Exactly. It's just, it definitely can lead to the feast and famine thing because if you don't have your next client, then the money isn't coming in. Right. So that's really,Jane (05:47): And if you don't have systems and processes put in place, that's also another big sign that you're a gig master. Yeah.Pam (05:55): And we are huge on the fundamentals. We mentioned, you know, in the intro there that we're big on the foundations of business because oftentimes we start up a business and money is the end goal. We're trying to get away from a boss. I mean, there's a million reasons why we start a business, but money's the end goal. So we're busy working in the business to create that money. And we're not setting up any structure in order for us to get past that feast or famine gate master kind of scenario.Jane (06:32): Right. And that's what happens. And I know you and I have talked about this before, where people become a business owner sometimes out of necessity. Certainly this year in 2020, I lost my job. What am I going to do? Sometimes it's out of desire. I really want to be my own boss. Let me go ahead and get this thing started. So the natural inclination is to put a hundred percent of the focus on revenue generation, otherwise known as the income, the money coming into paying the bills. So there's a heavy focus on how do I make money or how do I generate revenue rather than implementing foundations that will create a business and create a system that you can rely on. And that will last. And then of course allow for scalability and growth.Pam (07:16): So, something that's really interesting, Jane that you talked about with me that I thought, Oh my God, other people really need to hear this. When we talked about sustainability and growth, you talked about decorating a house or something like that. Could you explain that? Because that was like light bulbs went off for me.Jane (07:33): Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I've been 10 years in the code 25 in sales, like through bonafide sales, I've really never had a job that didn't have sales production in it. So the context of that is this. When I would go contractually to work for some of my clients, one of my jobs was to enroll people into a program that was a good fit for them, where they would get the results that they wanted. And we had pre strategy sessions where the people would come up and they would ask questions and look for answers over the course of the next three days. They were attending this live event. So they were in a live event for two or three days. They were allowed to come and have a strategy session with me. The purpose of the strategy session was for them to ask a specific question so I could give them guidance and support around that question.And then of course let them know that that would probably be addressed, which it almost always was in that event and wanted them to be in the room at this time to listen to this specific thing. So what I noticed and what I encountered over and over again is that the questions were not good. And in sales, I always train the salespeople that the quality of the answers of any question is dependent upon the quality of the question. So what was happening is I had business owners come up to me and they had 20 minutes with me and I'd say, okay, what is your most pressing challenge? And let's see what we can do to make sure that we get some kind of strategy and plan, or I can give you advice around that. And I was getting questions like this. Should I post on Tuesdays or Thursdays?How many people should my Facebook group be? Should I enroll people into a six week or two, a six month program? Those aren't bad questions in and of themselves, but they're not the best question. And here's why when I would then ask back, well, who is your ideal client? I would get something like women over 40, who are stuck or working women who need childcare. That's not enough of a description of an ideal client, or I would say, what, what kind of annual revenue are you wanting to create and how do you want to deliver it? And they would just kind of be there during the headlights look. So I started using the analogy of a house. If you think about building a house, what's the fun part for most people, the decorations I'm going to get in there. Do I want, what floors do I want?Tile? What kind of paint? They really start going in visually before the house is completed. And in their mind, they're spending money or money either literally or not quite yet, but they're spending money. And they're thinking about the decorations and they spend a lot of time thinking about how the interior of the home is going to look, but what has to happen, or you will not have an interior of any home is the plan for the exterior. And it's not just the plan for the exterior. You want to call it back even further. Where do you want to live? Do you want to live in the mountains? Do you wanna live on the beach? Do you want a 10,000 square foot home? Do you want a thousand square foot home? What kind of lifestyle do you want? What kind of material do you want?What is this house supposed to be so that it supports you in your vision of living. And so the analogy there is, don't worry about what color your toilets are going to be or what floor material you're going to have when you don't have the architectural plan. When you don't even know where you're going to live. And when you certainly don't have anything that's truly nuts and bolts in that instance materials, that's going to support you. That is the foundation. It's building the home with an architect. The interior decorating comes later. If you flip it and you do the interior decorating first, you're in a whole heap of trouble. And so that's what I see people do over and over in business is they ask questions. That really don't matter in the moment because it doesn't matter if you're posting on a Tuesday or Thursday, if you can't clearly define your ideal client and the problem in the language that they would use and a solution that's compelling and has resonance with your language. So post whatever, cause you don't really have anything to post. So the quality of the answers, which will determine the sustainability of your business is always dependent upon the quality of the questions you ask. Well, that's really interesting because as gig masters or, you know,Pam (11:54): And we work from project to project client to client, when we're trying to grab those new clients or attract those new clients, we're jumping into tactics right away. So that's exactly what you're talking about. And you and I have kind of defined it as we have a dream like you were talking about, where would you like to live on the beach or in New York city or something like that. Then you create your vision around it. Then you create the strategy, then comes the tactics. So see how we're jumping into the tactics right away. If I go on social media, maybe I'll attract clients. If I do send out emails, if I do a podcast and you're scattered all over the place without any kind of vision and strategy of what you're trying to achieve. So after the tactics, then we implement. And then of course we measure to see if what we're doing is actually bearing fruit. If it's being successful for us. And then we can course correct. So I love that analogy of decorating the house before you've really got your foundation built. It's all out of order. It's upside down.Jane (13:14): Yeah. It's out of order. It's upside down and out of order, we can talk about this on a future podcast, actually out of order, it wreaks a lot of havoc and people can't tell until they're well past it. But when the dream has to come first, the vision supports the dream. The strategy supports the vision, the tactics support the strategy and then the implementation and measurement are applied to the tactics. So it's not just a good intention of, I need to make money, but it actually creates a plan that you can implement and measure because that's, that's really how results happen and you can tweak from there. And when all of that is out of whack and out of order, you spend unnecessary money, you spend unnecessary time, you get unnecessarily frustrated. So the strategy is so key. And of course the strategy has to support your vision, which should ultimately really support the dream. And I wish somebody would have laid all of this out for me 10 years ago when I went into the coaching industry and into my own business, I've been on a hundred percent commission for...

Flourish and Grow to CEO

Welcome to the Flourish and Grow to CEO Podcast! We’re so glad that you’ve joined us in our journey to create this show, a long-time dream for us both.We met in Lisbon, Portugal on a month-long coworking trip through my company, Adventurous Life, and hit it off instantly. The next year, November and December of 2019, Jane joined Adventurous Life on another trip, this time to Australia and New Zealand and we knew we just had to work together.Both of us strongly believe in the importance of building strong foundations for successful and sustainable small businesses, and we both agreed that many small business owners simply don’t have comprehensive foundations created for their business. Over the last year, we’ve been working on a program for women entrepreneurs, aged 50+ (cause we are), who are currently making in the $50-100k range in their business and are finding the push over into six figures elusive.We took two high-level courses ourselves – one in building memberships, and the other in creating experiential launches. And we worked toward both of these goals.Then, one day, we took a step back and thought, we need to heed our own advice – we really need to define the vision for our company, create the strategy, and then outline the tactics we’ll use to support that strategy and drive toward our vision.This is how the podcast was born. We both love to talk, share and entertain, so it was natural.Flourish and Grow to CEO is hosted by certified small business manager, Pam Ivey, and sales strategist, Jane Garee, who share their experiences in business and marketing to help women entrepreneurs scale their business and flourish confidently into the CEO role.