Engineering Calmer Agencies & Consulting Firms: Calm is the New KPI

As I have been talking with business owners about maintenance mode, they have consistently brought up burnout. That moment when they realized that they couldn't keep working the way they were working.Caring for a family member or realizing they were burnt out or trying to handle a load of virtual school with no child care for a year – they all encountered a recognition that their own personal capacity had been reduced. For me, that moment of recognition forced me to realize that my realistic maximum capacity was WAY lower than I thought it was. We all have a maximum capacity - a ceiling of how much work we want to do or how much our business can handle. But also true for us as individuals. And so when you're preparing your business for maintenance mode, you need to examine your own capacity as a founder. You need to think about your own energy, priorities, and boundaries. And that's virtually impossible if you're stressed and exhausted. Re-examination forced by burnout and exhaustion is exactly what happened to today’s guest, Finka Jerkovic. Managing her own energy as a business owner has been crucial in making sure that she is building a business that is supporting her, building a business based on work that she truly LOVES to do.Finka is a coach, speaker, and author of the book Sell From Love.She brings over two decades of experience in corporate Canada in the financial services industry, with expertise in sales, leadership, communication, and coaching.Finka helps her clients discover their “Brilliant Difference” so that they get 100% clear on their unique talents, skills, and expertise so that they can use their personal strengths to grow their business.Listen to the full episode to hear:What led to Finka recognizing that she had hit burnout and how she approached the need for immediate change How she approached her capacity, energetically and operationally, differently when she came back from burnout How what Finka calls “environmental wrenches” are actually just systems How the same systems that help prepare our business for maintenance mode are the SAME systems that can help increase our capacity That you can say yes to as much as you want, but your systems of support need to be built in order for you to be able to say yes. Learn more about Finka Jerkovic:Sell From LoveInstagram @finka_jerkovicLinkedIn @finka-jerkovicLearn more about Susan:Scalespark Dollars + Decisions RoundtableTwitter @ScaleSparkLinkedIn @thesusanboles Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

How's your capacity feeling these days? Getting a lot done? Or, like me, have you been hitting that pandemic wall hard? Over the last few weeks, I've been exploring the idea of maintenance mode in business, and today I want to shift from exploring the IDEA of maintenance mode into more tactical applications. If YOU wanted to move your business into maintenance mode, or you wanted to focus on scaling, how would you DO that? How would you prepare for maintenance mode? In all of my conversations with other business owners who have made this shift, there has consistently been a first step that they had to address.Capacity.Either the business's capacity or their own capacity as the owner. Each business owner ran up against a wall (sometimes repeatedly) and came to the realization that the way they HAD been working wasn't the way they wanted to CONTINUE working.They had to make changes to increase their capacity. Sometimes, that meant changing a business model to a more sustainable one. Sometimes it meant creating a capacity limit to protect their energy or just stepping back from the work for months at a time. Sometimes it just meant examining the work they did and figuring out how to make it more efficient. That's the path that today’s guest, Anna Wolf, took. Anna is the CEO and owner of SuperScript Marketing, a content marketing agency for financial brands. She runs a team of marketers, scattered throughout the world, who create content for financial companies and who provide customized services for each client.When Anna ran up against her capacity ceiling, she decided that she loved the work she was doing and didn't really want to change the way that she was working. But that something still had to change.So Anna turned to systems. Listen to the full episode to hear:How Anna thinks about capacity and figuring out what the real capacity is in her businessesAbout some of the projects that Anna built to expand her business’s capacity without fundamentally changing what she was already doing to deliver quality servicesWhat impact these systems and processes have had on her business or on her own capacity as the ownerAnd how Anna has learned that there needs to be a balance between seeking answers externally and follow your gut, even if that means risking making mistakesLearn more about Anna Wolf:SuperScript Financial Marketing Agency LinkedIn @annawolfLearn more about Susan:Scalespark Dollars + Decisions RoundtableTwitter @ScaleSparkLinkedIn @thesusanboles Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

Visionary or Integrator? Startup or Maintenance CEO?In the world of business, there is no shortage of ways to categorize your leadership style and the way you operate. But maybe in the real world, it's not quite so distinct.I LOVE quizzes and personality tests and different ways of categorizing my personality, my skills, and how I think about things.Sometimes these assessments are genuinely useful and can help us understand how and why we do the things we do and think the way we think - which can help us improve our weaknesses and lean into our strengths.But, they can also sometimes create artificial boxes around us and create limitations that can keep us from growing as leaders and as individuals.One of these dichotomies that I've repeatedly gotten stuck on, personally, is the idea that you are either a startup or a maintenance CEO.You're either the energetic kid here to whip everyone into a frenzy of work, who changes things at the drop of a hat. Or you're the "adult" they bring in once things are rolling, so you can bring order to the chaos.As we've been talking about maintenance mode, it seemed like a logical choice to examine whether or not all business owners can even BE in maintenance mode. What if you ARE either a startup CEO or a maintenance one? Does that mean that your business will never be able to operate like clockwork?My guest today is Sarah Avenir, author and the CEO of &yet, a marketing and messaging agency. And she's been on both sides of this debate.She's BEEN a startup CEO, a freelancer, an employee, and then she got tapped to become the CEO of &yet and she had to figure out how to make a team of designers, developers, and strategists come together under what she calls systems of practice.Listen to the full episode to hear:What Sarah thinks of the dichotomy of Start-Up CEO vs Maintenance CEO and what the term Maintenance Mode means to herWhat the journey from being a startup CEO to a maintenance style CEO has been like for somebody who thinks in systems and who is comfortable with consistency.How Sarah has found freedom through the structure and routine of systemsAnd how systems in practice incorporates being a human being and what we need to stay healthyLearn more about Sarah Avenir:Twitter @sarahavenirRoam ResearchPeople-First GrowthFind Your WeirdosMeet Our WeirdosLearn more about Susan:Scalespark Dollars + Decisions RoundtableTwitter @ScaleSparkLinkedIn @thesusanboles Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

Sometimes it takes more than one try to really nail the execution of an idea. Creating scalable systems isn't necessarily intuitive and it runs counter to most of our narratives about how hustling hard and creating more is the path to success. I propose that the path to success is actually radical consistency.As I was looking around for guests for this series on maintenance mode, I started thinking about all the business owners I know who REALLY seem to have nailed it. Who think in systems, in processes, who really understand the power of consistency. And I noticed something about most of the folks that came to mind - they were all second or third-time founders. They'd built a company and then built another. They'd been through the process at least once before, realized that consistency and systems are the key to building and scaling a successful company and then when they built their second company, they designed it FROM THE BEGINNING, with maintenance mode or scaling in mind. Most of us are creating businesses that tie us to a physical place and set hours. But oftentimes, the life we want to live doesn’t always align with the businesses we create. When I started ScaleSpark, I designed it from the ground up to be the kind of business that would give me the freedom and flexibility I wanted. I knew what my end game was so I built a business that reflected that.My guest today did the same thing. Ryan Lazanis is the founder of Future Firm, which helps accounting firm owners grow an online scalable firm. I thought Ryan would be the perfect person to talk about this because Future Firm is his second company. Back in 2013, he founded Zen Accounting, which he started, scaled, and then sold.Listen to the full episode to hear:What Ryan learned from his first company about creating a scalable company that can operate on maintenance modeThe lessons he took with him from that first company and how it influenced how he built the second oneHow Ryan reverse-engineered his business to revolve around his ideal lifeLearn more about Ryan Lazanis:futurefirm.cofuturefirmaccelerate.comLearn more about Susan:Scalespark Dollars + Decisions RoundtableTwitter @ScaleSparkLinkedIn @thesusanboles Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

I've been spending a lot of time this year thinking about capacity. A lot of the work I do focuses on helping clients streamline their operations to increase their capacity without increasing their costs or business complexity. ScaleSpark actually started as an outgrowth of me running businesses and holding a full-time job. We owned a guest ranch and a brick-and-mortar store while I worked full time and ran all the back ends of those operations.I had to figure out a way to make that backend run seamlessly and efficiently because I only had maybe an hour or two a day before I went to my day job and I needed to be really effective with my time… which led me to software. I used software tools to make the operations mostly run without me. Understanding how to use technology to boost capacity was something I had to learn for my businesses to survive. And eventually I started ScaleSpark to help other businesses harness those tools and boost their own capacity.Even though increasing capacity is one of my core competencies, capacity has been a real issue for me over the last year. So the first question I asked was: what can I stop doing? It actually turned out that there was a lot of stuff that, when I really examined it, wasn't bringing value into my business, but it was sucking up my time. I needed to get my business back to a place where if I needed to, I could set it and forget it. Maintenance mode. For this episode, I wanted to figure out what maintenance mode means to different people and what it looks like in different kinds of businesses. I started asking podcast guests and people around me what maintenance mode meant to them and I never got the same answer twice. Listen to the full episode to hear:Growth mode versus maintenance mode and how you can be in both at the same timeHow the skills, systems, and tools that you would build and develop for maintenance mode are pretty much the same as the ones you would build for scalingWhy process can be so powerful for increasing your capacity, whether that's for maintenance mode scaling or just to make your job take less timeHow maintenance mode affects product-based businesses and how to define which products require you to be more involved and which ones can run on their ownLearn more about Ryan, Anna, and Tamara:Ryan Lazanis – futurefirmaccelerate.comAnna Wolf – superscriptmarketing.comTamara Kemper – trainual.comLearn more about Susan:Scalespark Dollars + Decisions RoundtableTwitter @ScaleSparkLinkedIn @thesusanboles Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

I’m working on some really cool updates for my course, Not Rocket Finance – releasing at the end of March! – so I’m going to take a very short break from releasing new episodes to give myself some breathing room to finish those updates.For the past couple of weeks, I've been re-releasing episodes that are the best cuts from three of my very favorite Break The Ceiling Episodes.This week—and our last Best of Break The Ceiling—I'm revisiting my interview with Michelle Warner.Michelle designs tiny companies that are built to last and is the creator of Networking That Pays, the 5 minute a day, never awkward networking system. She's a pro at helping business owners get out of their own way... and she's who I go to when I'm getting in MY own way.She's a pro at helping business owners get out of their own way and she's one of those people that I go to when I'm getting in my own way.Michelle and I talk about her 80 20 framework to harness creative energy and how to turn it into something useful instead of something that can quickly derail you.This is the perfect episode to get you ready for digging more into maintenance mode in your business because that creativity and subsequent derailment is one of those mindset things that can really trip folks up when they're thinking about getting into maintenance mode.If you liked these cuts and you want to hear more from my conversation with Michelle, you can go listen to the full episode here.Although I’ve been taking a break with the podcast, I am still meeting with smart business owners like you at my Dollars + Decisions Round Table. At the last round table, we talked about capacity issues and we had a really great discussion around getting into Maintenance Mode in your business.To register for the next Dollars + Decisions Round Table, go to scalespark.co/dollarsanddecisions.Learn more about Michelle:themichellewarner.comNetworkingthatpays.comInstagram: @michelle.warnerTwitter: @warnermichelleFacebook: @themichellewarnerLearn more about Susan:Scalespark Dollars + Decisions RoundtableTwitter @ScaleSparkLinkedIn @thesusanboles Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

I’m working on some really cool updates for my course, Not Rocket Finance – releasing at the end of March! – so I’m going to take a very short break from releasing new episodes to give myself some breathing room to finish those updates.For the next three weeks, I'm going to re-release episodes that are the best cuts from three of my very favorite Break The Ceiling Episodes.This week, I'm revisiting my interview with Charlie Gilkey.Charlie helps people start finishing the stuff that matters. He's the founder of Productive Flourishing, author of the book Start Finishing (2019) and The Small Business Lifecycle (2012), and host of the Productive Flourishing podcast.Charlie and I talk about how to get out of your own way and how to avoid roadblocks that you inevitably run up against.If you liked these cuts and you want to hear more from my conversation with Charlie, you can go listen to the full episode here.Even though I'm not releasing new episodes for the next few weeks, I am still meeting with smart business owners like you at my Dollars + Decisions Round Table. At the last round table, we talked about capacity issues and we had a really great discussion around getting into Maintenance Mode in your business.To register for the next Dollars + Decisions Round Table, go to scalespark.co/dollarsanddecisions.Learn more about Charlie:Facebook: Productive FlourishingTwitter: @CharlieGilkeyInstagram: @productiveflourishing, @momentumplannerLearn more about Susan:Scalespark Dollars + Decisions RoundtableTwitter @ScaleSparkLinkedIn @thesusanbolesResources:Transistor.fm (affiliate) Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

I’m working on some really cool updates for my course, Not Rocket Finance – releasing at the end of March! – so I’m going to take a very short break from releasing new episodes to give myself some breathing room to finish those updates.For the next three weeks, I'm going to re-release episodes that are the best cuts from three of my very favorite Break The Ceiling Episodes.This week, I'm revisiting my interview with Justin Jackson, co-founder of transistor.fm, the company that hosts this podcast.In this interview, Justin and I talked about how to look out for opportunities and we went pretty deep on how to build margins into your business.If you liked these cuts and you want to hear more from my conversation with Justin, you can go listen to the full episode here.And even though I'm not releasing new episodes for the next few weeks, I am still meeting with smart business owners like you at my Dollars + Decisions Round Table. At the last round table, we talked about capacity issues and we had a really great discussion around getting into Maintenance Mode in your business.To register for the next Dollars + Decisions Round Table, go to scalespark.co/dollarsanddecisions.Learn more about Justin:Transistor.fm (affiliate)justinjackson.caBuild Your SaaS PodcastJustin Jackson’s Weekly NewsletterBaremetrics Open Startup ProjectLearn more about Susan:Scalespark Dollars + Decisions RoundtableTwitter @ScaleSparkLinkedIn @thesusanboles Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

Have you thought about leaving Facebook? Or what would happen if you pulled your advertising and ditched the Facebook pixel? How are YOU getting feedback about whether or not your marketing efforts are "worth it"? All this month, I've been talking about digital privacy and online security and sharing how I researched and implemented a privacy-first marketing strategy for my business. So far, I’ve talked to Paul Jarvis on privacy-focused alternatives to Google Analytics, Jessica Robinson on how to assess your business's online security, and Kim Herrington about how focusing on SEO became a big part of my marketing effort as I focused on respect for individual data privacy. If you missed those episodes, I recommend you go give them a listen because they include a lot of background on this whole experiment and how it came about. This week, I wanted to talk about social media because social media platforms are some of the biggest offenders when it comes to data privacy issues. They track every move we make, what we say near our phones, where we go while we have them... all of it. When it came to my privacy-focused experiment, there wasn't much for me to do, other than pulling the plug on social media platforms completely. I'm not very active on any platform besides Twitter, which I use to build relationships with mostly peers and other business friends, not so much as a lead-gathering system. I also committed to not buying ads on Facebook or Instagram... but since I hadn't been doing that before, there wasn't much of a change. I also committed to not using the Facebook tracking pixel, but again, since I hadn't been using it before, there wasn't anything to remove or change there either. BUT... these ARE major marketing channels for LOTS of small businesses, and it's an important part of the decision-making process if you're thinking about your own marketing from a perspective of privacy, so I wanted to bring on someone who did go through this evaluation process and implemented their OWN experiment. Meet Nathalie Lussier. Nathalie has been making websites since she was 12 years old, so she's been living in the online world for quite a while. She's the founder of AccessAlly, which is a digital course and membership solution. And about a year ago, she took the Facebook tracking pixel off her website, and then left Instagram as a platform, both for her business and personally. Listen to the full episode to hear:How Nathalie made the decision to drop the pixel and leave InstagramWhat she does instead now and we talk about how to get real, actionable data while still respecting people's privacy AND holding true to her own desire not to support Facebook as a company. The projects and ideas that I'm still working on implementing for ScaleSpark when it comes to digital privacyLearn more about Nathalie Lussier:accessally.com30daylistbuildingchallenge.com@nathlussier on TwitterAccessAlly on FacebookLearn more about Susan:Scalespark Dollars + Decisions RoundtableTwitter @ScaleSparkLinkedIn @thesusanbolesResources:Transistor.fm (affiliate) Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

When I was first thinking about what privacy-focused marketing meant, I asked a few of my favorite marketing friends: if THEY were going to do privacy-focused marketing, what would they do?Universally, everyone came back with the answer of podcasting and SEO.Podcasting is one of the very few places in the world of media still without automatic digital ad insertions, for the most part. Also, podcast data tracking is not that detailed. Download or subscriber numbers are notoriously unreliable and the ability to tie downloads to an individual is relatively difficult. So, in terms of content delivery, podcasting is pretty private.This month, we've been talking about digital privacy and online security - and following along a bit with an experiment in privacy-focused marketing I decided to take on for my own business.Since podcasting was already a major part of my marketing strategy, I was already using a privacy-focused podcast hosting platform, so for my experiment, there really wasn't anything for me to change.Then we come to SEO—search engine optimization—which is the focus of THIS episode and was the next big piece that I added into my privacy-first marketing initiative. Up to this point in my business, I hadn't really paid much attention to SEO, assuming it was mostly for businesses larger than mine and that it would be something I added... someday.But, in light of trying to figure out how to still get traffic and leads, while not tracking folks or paying advertising dollars to companies that I REALLY didn't want to support like Facebook, investing in making my content more searchable and PULLING people to me just made sense. They were already searching for the content anyway... why not be the answer to their questions?To do this, I needed to find some support. I didn't have time (or honestly much of a desire) to learn the details of SEO. Enter Kim Herrington. Kim is an SEO consultant and the founder of Orsanna, a marketing agency for law firms, financial services, and other professional services.I found Kim by listening to a podcast episode where she described the work she did for Paul Jarvis (the co-founder of Fathom from 2 episodes ago). Because Paul is so committed to digital privacy, I knew that Kim would be well-acquainted with the privacy-first approach I was trying to take.Kim has been instrumental in helping me execute my privacy-focused marketing strategy and keeps me up to date on changes in the marketing and digital privacy world.Listen to the full episode to hear:What Kim’s done for me behind-the-scenes at ScaleSparkBehind the scenes of ScaleSpark's privacy-focused marketing experimentWhy SEO is the perfect strategy if you're concerned with data privacy in your own marketingThe big changes coming with Facebook and Instagram and data tracking that we should all know aboutLearn more about Kim Herrington:Follow Kim on Instagramkimberlyherrington.comkimberlyherrington.com/guideorsanna.comLearn more about Susan:Scalespark Dollars + Decisions RoundtableTwitter @ScaleSparkLinkedIn @thesusanbolesResources:Transistor.fm (affiliate) Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here