What Works

What Works is all about exploring what’s really working for small business owners. Because there are a lot of assumptions and misconceptions about what it takes to build a stronger business. This week, I’m bringing you something a little different. It’s an interview that I did for Andréa Jones’s podcast, The Savvy Social Podcast. Andréa and I are both on a mission to bust some of the assumptions that people have about what’s good for business when it comes to social media marketing. For me, it’s a small part of what I do. But for Andréa, this is her whole business. Andréa runs a thriving social media marketing agency called OnlineDrea as well as a training community for small business owners called Savvy Social School. I’ve featured Andréa here on the pod before and we talked about how she approaches social media pretty differently when it comes to her own business versus how she manages social media for her clients with very different business models. Good news: next week’s episode is a follow up to that conversation. I respect the heck out of the way Andréa approaches social media and the way she trains other small business owners to manage their own marketing. And so when she asked if she could interview me about the unconventional approach I’ve taken to social media this year, I was honored. What follows is that conversation. If you like this conversation, you’re going to love Andréa’s podcast, the Savvy Social Podcast—so check that out wherever you listen to What Works. And tell her I sent you, okay? I asked Andréa if I could rebroadcast this conversation here at What Works because I think it gives a glimpse into how simplifying can help you focus on quality over quantity. So without further ado, let’s get into. Listen up for the most concise explanation I’ve ever given for the philosophy behind What Works, why I’m focused on remarkable content this year, and how that focus has simplified the way I produce content for social media. I also talk about how I view my primary job at What Works as a content creator—which is a job I love but isn’t right for everyone. ★ Support this podcast ★

How do you make a big change to your business model without making it harder than it has to be? How do you navigate sunsetting an old offer (or a few), raising your prices, or shifting your target client? After spending a whole month talking about simplifying on What Works, I’ve had more than a few people wonder what it was actually going to take to make some big changes to the way they do business. This question happened to come up during this month’s Insider Hour—a Q&A session I host each month for What Works Network members. And I wanted to share my answer in case it’s helpful to you and the changes you’re considering for your business, too. You might also find it helpful to check out these resources: * Free Workbook: How To Create A Plan To Grow Your Business* 7 Simple Business Models For Small Business Owners* Why Reactivity Leads To Complexity* Embracing Simplicity with Brigitte Lyons & Sophy Dale* What I Wish Every Small Business Owner Knew About Making More Money ★ Support this podcast ★

I’m convinced that every entrepreneur has a fantasy business that they daydream about. It’s free from all of the baggage and assumptions that we’ve built up around our existing businesses. And I’m also convinced that that fantasy business—as pie-in-the-sky as it may be—has something to teach us about our existing businesses. They can show us how we’d market differently, set policies differently, and protect our time differently. They show us the kinds of relationships we’d prefer to have with clients or the type of work we’d rather be doing. And, maybe more than anything, they show us just how simple a business can be. With a few exceptions, I don’t think most of us daydream about convoluted, complicated businesses. We dream up simple businesses—ones that thrive with minimal BS. Today, I’m sharing 3 ways that I built my fantasy business—the one I’d been dreaming about for years—and how it’s different from What Works. In this episode, you’ll hear: * Why making changes to an existing business is less like steering a big ship and more like dragging the anchor behind you* How focusing on process & systems helped us create a simple business model* What we did to create an offer that was an obvious “yes” for the right people and an obvious “no” for the wrong people* And how we’ve gotten away with almost zero marketing since we got started almost 2 years ago Read the full transcript below: If you were to start a new business—something that has nothing to do with what you’re doing now… …what would it be? Maybe you daydream about starting a copywriting business specializing in beekeepers, or you fantasize about becoming a tarot reader for financial professionals. Perhaps you’ve thought about how you’d do web design differently or create a curated subscription box in a whole new way. I’m convinced that we all have a business—or several—that we daydream about. And I believe that there’s a lot we could learn from these fantasy businesses. This month, we’ve been talking about simplifying. I don’t think any of us dreams up overly complicated businesses. These businesses strike an elegant balance between your needs and wants as a founder and the market’s needs and wants. None of my fantasy business ideas are complicated. A few years ago, I wanted to launch a brand of bralettes for bigger busts. Just one or two styles sized appropriately for people with a D-cup larger. And mind you, this was before everyone started selling bralettes for bigger busts. I’ve dreamed up a personal training business for high-performing women—part coaching, part fitness, all monthly retainer. I’ve talked about how I’d love to open a simple, high-quality coffee shop in my town. And I’ve dreamed of opening a yoga studio on Main Street, too. While coffee shops & yoga studios might not be high-margin businesses, they’re undoubtedly simple models. I’ve also joked that one of these days, I’m just going to quit everything and set myself up as a professional Canva designer. I also imagine this business to be pretty straightforward. Our fantasy businesses can teach us what we’d do differently if we were starting from... ★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode: * How Sophy Dale decided to let go of 2 of her 3 businesses and just focus on one and why figuring out a novel distribution strategy was a key part of the decision* Why Brigitte Lyons paid attention to what would break if her business grew to figure out how things needed to become simpler* Why Brigitte chose to focus on long-term client engagements* How Sophy is actually able to get more support now that her business is simpler* The tools and software that they use to run their streamlined businesses* And, of course, the incredible results of all of this simplification! So… things have gotten complicated. Your business is a mess of competing priorities. Mismatched marketing messages. Dusty old brand positioning. Stale offers. And the clutter from all the times you’ve tried to solve problems by doing more. It’s easy to think that all of this unproductive complexity is a sign that you screwed up—that you’re not very good at this whole building a business thing. But that ignores the fact that all of us have been programmed from birth to equate more work with good work, checking more things off the list with checking the right things off the list. Today, I’ve got part 2 of my conversation with Brigitte Lyons & Sophy Dale about simplifying their businesses. But first, I want to explore a key aspect of how we let things get so complicated in the first place. Last month, I read a book that I just can’t stop quoting or recommending—and I’m not gonna start today. The book is Can’t Even: How Millennials Because The Burnout Generation. Yes, I’m a millennial—an elder millennial to be specific. And I deeply and profoundly relate to everything in this book. But as the author, Anne Helen Petersen, points out the systemic causes of our burnout culture are felt by every generation—just with slightly different results. Petersen writes: Barring a significant, psychology-altering intervention, once someone equates “good” work with overwork, that conception will stay with them—and anyone under their power—for the rest of their lives. She goes on to say: We’ve conditioned ourselves to ignore every signal from the body saying This is too much, and we call that conditioning “grit” or “hustle.” If that’s feeling a little too real to you right now, you’re certainly not alone. I’m quite certain that there are many listeners out there releasing a collective OOF. Here’s the thing, we can say we started our own businesses to gain more flexibility in our lives, more control over our schedules, more time to spend with family or on our art or in our communities… …but we haven’t had the psychology-altering intervention that would allow us to actually make that happen. We’ve been taught that unless we pay our dues through overworking and overproducing and overdelivering, we can’t be successful. And the way that plays out in our businesses? Complexity. More offers. More clients. More emails. More marketing tactics. More social media posts. More lead magnets. More Zoom calls. More deliverables. When all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail, right? Doing more and inevitably making things more complex is the main tool we’ve been trained to use. ★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode: * How Sophy Dale ended up running 3 separate businesses—and what made her realize it was all too complicated* How Brigitte Lyons realized that her PR agency was letting scope creep make it feel like she was still throwing spaghetti at a wall* What both Sophy & Brigitte did to approach simplifying their businesses* And the personal reasons why simplifying was the ticket to creating businesses that worked both for their bank accounts and for their lives What I wish every small business owner knew about making more money is… …it doesn’t have to be so complicated. I mean that literally. Creating a more complicated business doesn’t guarantee you a bigger paycheck, a bigger audience, or a bigger impact in the world. Adding more and more moving parts to how your business runs doesn’t get you more happy customers or more personal satisfaction, either. Of course, this doesn’t put a stop to the anxiety of feeling like, if only you could do more, things would be better. I am certainly not immune from overcomplicating things and feeling despair that there aren’t more hours in the day. I’ve created intricate marketing plans, business models, and schedules all with the hope that I could pass a threshold of doing enough to make it big. But looking back over the last 12 years… I can easily see that my greatest successes have come from keeping it simple. So what does this mean for you? Whether you want to make more money or you’re looking to make a bigger impact or you’re looking for more time, we’ve got to get down to the fundamental challenges that exist in your business. What I mean by that is that “not making more money” isn’t actually a problem to solve. It’s a symptom, an indicator that there’s something else going on. Making more money is the result of solving a more specific problem or set of challenges. It might be a positioning problem. Or a pricing problem. It could be a customer challenge or a capacity issue. It might be a marketing problem—although, I wouldn’t bet on it. It might be a business model challenge or an operational issue. Or, it could be any combination of those things. By addressing those root challenges, we can create simple, sustainable businesses that make a lot more money. Or we can build simple, sustainable businesses that afford us more time, flexibility, or a greater impact in our communities. Today, we’re kicking off both a series on simplifying and a set of two episodes with businesses owners who have direct experience with dramatically simplifying their businesses—and in turn, creating immense growth. Brigitte Lyons is the founder of Podcast Ally, a PR agency specializing in getting experts and idea people booked on podcasts. Sophy Dale is a copywriting mentor, messaging coach, and brand storyteller who helps coaches, designers, and course-creators write compelling copy. Both Brigitte and Sophy know what it’s like to run complicated, bloated businesses. ★ Support this podcast ★

Sometimes it can feel like you don’t find opportunity, opportunity finds you. But even then, it’s the fact that you were paying attention—listening, watching, taking it all in—that allows you to act on it. It can make me sick to my stomach to think of all of the opportunities I let slide because I wasn’t paying attention! All this month, we’ve been looking at identifying opportunity and making exciting things happen. To kick off the series, I shared a framework for examining your business through the lens of sustainability to discover your next opportunity. Then, I talked with Anna Wolf from Superscript Marketing about how she realized that the building sustainable structures & systems for her business was her big opportunity. Next, we turned our attention to financial sustainability and I shared my 2019 conversation with Systems Saved Me Founder, Jordan Gill. Finally, I shared my conversation with business coach Justine Clay and we looked at how identifying choice is a big part of realizing you have an opportunity–and how to navigate the crossroads when it is time to make a choice. As we close out the month, I have 3 more inspiring stories for you—all on the exact same theme: paying attention. Zoe Linda Pollard shares how she went from working in a digital marketing agency to starting a social media strategy business to finally discovering that her big opportunity was to focus on helping business owners build & run affiliate marketing programs. Erin Detka shares how she went from running a massage studio to starting a web design business in mid-2020 and how it helped her to get back to the kind of lifestyle she really values. And finally Corinna vanGerwen shares how she started her business doing something that–at most–only a few people had done before. And how paying attention to her past experience and the current market helped her find the perfect niche opportunity! Before we get to those stories, though, I thought I’d add my own in. In the last 12 years, I’ve certainly spotted and acted on plenty of opportunities. I wrote & sold one of the first ebooks in the craft & maker business world. I created a group business coaching program before that was a thing. I took the leap to appear on CreativeLive in front of 10s of thousands of live viewers and teach 12 classes over 4 years. But I’m incredibly proud of the story behind YellowHouse.Media and how paying attention helped us spot the right opportunity and build a fast-growing business. I can remember back in 2015 when I started jonesing to host a podcast… I had no idea how podcasting-as-marketing worked. I knew that I had an opportunity to connect with my existing audience and connect with new people to grow my audience. But it was early enough—which wasn’t very early at all—in podcasting that “if you build it, ★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode: * How business coach Justine Clay decides whether or not to pursue an opportunity* Why she starts with feelings first and how she builds a “scaffolding” around those feelings with practical execution* What she did in the midst of the Great Recession to create a new opportunity by generously serving out-of-work creatives* How Justine views working on herself as an opportunity for growth Opportunities always come at a crossroads. Sometimes they’re intersections with big flashing lights and signs pointing to what’s ahead in either direction. Other times, it’s impossible to know where each path goes. Maybe it’s even hard to see that there is a choice of direction in the first place. But when we can really take notice of all the places we choose to go one direction or another, we can see that there are opportunities all around us—even when they’re not the opportunities we were looking for. This month, we’ve been exploring how we spot opportunities and what we do with them once they’re in view. Opportunities are, in effect, choices. And while we don’t all have equal access to the same quantity or quality of choices, I think it’s valuable to notice when you do have a choice and how often you make a choice without even realizing it. With every new opportunity—every choice—there’s a trade-off. You might have the opportunity to hire someone to help you—but that means you’re trading off some amount of control. You might have the opportunity to try out a new marketing channel—but that means you’re trading off time and effort you’ve been putting into another marketing channel. You might have the opportunity to develop a new offer—but that means you’re trading off the focus you’ve put on what you’re currently offering. Trading between one option and another isn’t a bad thing, of course. It just is. No matter what we choose or what opportunity to pursue, there’s something else we’re not choosing or pursuing. That’s opportunity cost. If I hire someone for my business and trade off some control, I’m potentially missing out on keeping things simpler and more streamlined. If I pursue a new marketing channel, I’m missing out on the potential growth that continuing to focus on my existing marketing channel could create. If I develop a new offer, I’m missing out on the potential revenue that doubling-down on my current offer could generate. Again, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Opportunity cost exists with every choice, on both sides of the crossroads. Except that we rarely notice it. When we make a choice or pursue an opportunity without realizing the trade-off, or when we fail to see we’re making a choice at all… …we rob ourselves of the chance to truly evaluate the direction we want to take next. We’re so eager to consider the benefit of choosing one direction or the other that we rarely stop to weigh what we’re giving up no matter what we choose. This week, my guest is Justine Clay, ★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode: * How Jordan Gill used data and experience to set competitive prices for her business operations firm* Why she focused on serving seasonal service-based businesses and how that impacts the way she delivers her service* The stat she used to figure out a new way to offer her services* What expenses Jordan accounts for in pricing her unusual offer Is your business financially sustainable? The answer to that question goes beyond how much revenue your business generates, how much you charge for your products or services, and or even how much you pay yourself. We tend to fixate on those measures of financial success because they’re pretty objective. I can check my P&L and spot how much revenue came in last month or last year. I can pat myself on the back for raising the prices on my offer. And I can enjoy a healthy salary or bask in my profit distribution… But none of those numbers really capture the financial sustainability of my business as a whole—and that can mean I might miss out on the opportunities for future growth or impact. In Episode 325, I defined financial sustainability as having a revenue model that supports the business’s operational evolution and the financial needs of the people involved. Let’s unpack that a bit. Your business’s revenue model—or your business model—is the system that you use to create, deliver, and exchange value. In other words, it’s what you sell, how you deliver it once it’s sold, and what you charge for it. Now, we often measure this sort of “in the moment.” Is the revenue model working right now? Is the business generating enough to cover my own pay and the business’s expenses? Am I working too hard today for the paycheck I’m getting tomorrow? Obviously, you want your business to work right now. But if all we ever do is set up our businesses to work right now, then we’re missing opportunities to build margin and resilience into our businesses for the future. Plus, we’re having to continually go in and recalculate–which creates the sort of precarity that leads to burnout. So maybe your revenue model is working today. But will it work tomorrow? As your needs and the needs of the business evolve, will the revenue model be able to keep up? I can almost guarantee you that your next financial opportunity comes from taking a longer view on your revenue model. I’m in the midst of this with a number of business owners right now. Taking a short-term view has helped them get their feet under them and find an impressive level of initial success! But now they’re feeling squeezed just trying to figure out how to eek out a little more growth. For me, the key here isn’t to consider what a little more growth could look like—that shorter-term view. But instead, to consider what a lot more growth could look like and take long-term view. Consider that your long-term, higher-level growth opportunity is rarely a matter of doing more. It takes a long, hard look at each revenue stream and weighing whether it can adapt to hold its weight in a business generating 2 or 3 times more re... ★ Support this podcast ★

In This Episode: * Why SuperScript Marketing founder Anna Wolf started her niche content marketing agency aimed at the financial service industry* How learning search engine optimization led to major growth—and a focus on productized service* What prompted Anna to become obsessed with building sustainable structures & systems for her agency* How focusing on SuperScript’s core competency gave Anna a framework for pursuing growth What does your business need to be able to do really, really well in order to thrive? The answer to that question is your business’s core competency—or one of its core competencies. Your core competency is the key capability your business has or a key promise that it makes that differentiates your business from others offering similar products or services. And knowing your core competency is a key way to build both opportunity and capacity into your business—which in turn, makes it more sustainable. This month, we’re taking a closer look at how business owners spot opportunities and choose to pursue them. Now, I know “core competency” sounds like a jargony management consultant phrase. And that’s because it is. But it really is such a useful concept. When you know the core competencies of your business, you can invest your time, energy, and even money, into the systems and structures that are going to allow you to make sure that aspect of your business works as well as it possibly can. When that aspect of your business is working as well as it possibly can, it helps to differentiate what your business does and how it serves its clients or customers—which then helps you position the business, attract your perfect-fit customers, and set your prices sustainably. Let me give you an example. At What Works, our core competency is built on community-building. But we actually get more specific than that. Our core competency is actually how we create conversation to foster learning inside of our community. We do that a few ways: a weekly member-only newsletter, weekly events, and weekly check-ins & conversation-start questions. We also do it through this podcast—which, even though it’s free & publicly available—is still a key part of the conversations we start & nurture inside the private network. A few years ago, we realized that, while we had systems in place for scheduling events, planning community content, and producing the podcast, all of those systems were siloed–disjointed. Despite the fact that they were doing VERY similiar jobs, these systems didn’t play nicely together and they weren’t managed in the same place. So we made a change. We brought together every single aspect of conversation-starting we do at What Works into a single database. Today, you can find the procedures for creating an event, managing our newsletters, or producing the podcast all in one place. Everyone on the team knows what’s happening from day to day–because it’s all right there. Each aspect of our conversation-starting content is designed to work together cohesively, as are the logistics behind each aspect. ★ Support this podcast ★

What if your biggest opportunity didn’t involve doing more but doing less? What if scaling back and simplifying wasn’t only a way to make your life better but a way to build a more successful business, too? This month on What Works, we’re exploring opportunity—how we discover it, how we decide to pursue it, and what we do to take advantage of it. Lately, I’ve been thinking about how we are prone to waiting until “opportunity” comes to us nicely packaged and easy to use. We wonder if the latest social media platform will be the key to growing an audience or if the new trend in products or services will unlock a new revenue level. But I find that the best opportunities don’t come nicely packaged. Instead, opportunities often present themselves in messy ways—a series of “What if?” questions, a loose synthesis of seemingly unrelated information, or a jarring new perspective on an old problem. And I have found, over and over again, that the best way to notice these messy, half-formed opportunities is to put myself in the thick of other people’s “What if?” questions and the din of their seemingly unrelated stories. I’ve discovered my best opportunities at conferences and meet-ups, as well as in masterminds, direct message threads, and even when I’m doing podcast interviews! We have a whole world of information at our fingertips. But what’s really useful are the ideas that are filtered through our conversations and connections—curated, social ideas that help us turn questions into opportunities. These settings hold one of the keys to new opportunities because they help us see things in a new way. They change our perception of what’s possible by presenting options we might not have ever considered on our own. And this is key. Because no matter how creative we might be, it’s hard to come up with a completely unfamiliar idea. Instead, we use what’s familiar or known to make smaller leaps. This contributes to the phenomenon that I’ve been calling “The Squeeze.” “The Squeeze” occurs when you’ve run out of capacity in your business. You simply don’t have the time, energy, or mental bandwidth to do more, and so you can’t really see a way for the business to grow. Still, The Squeeze convinces you that if you just rearranged the pieces or tried a little harder, you could force some fresh growth. But alas, you just end up squeezed into a different arrangement of the same pieces. In other words, you use what’s familiar to try to work your way out of the Squeeze… and so you can’t quite escape because “what’s familiar” is what got you into the Squeeze in the first place. To actually alleviate the Squeeze, you have to take a completely different perspective and see things in a new way. And that’s how talking things out with others and learning how they see things differently really helps inspire opportunity. Now, I know it’s challenging to have those conversations or connect with people who see things in different ways. That’s one of the reasons I started this podcast 5 years ago; I desperately wante... ★ Support this podcast ★