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

This month on the podcast, I'm talking about privacy and security. Those are actually two different aspects of overall cybersecurity. I really love the definition of these two from the Fathom analytics blog about the difference between digital privacy and online security (I'll link to it in the show notes). It says: Digital privacy protects our personal information and data so that it's not unnecessarily exposed. This means that your information is protected before it’s known.Online security protects and secures our personal information and data when it needs to be exposed. If our personal information needs to be known, it's done as safely as possible. Last week, I talked to Paul Jarvis, the author of that blog post and co-founder of Fathom, a privacy-focused analytics company. We talked a LOT about digital privacy and how to ONLY collect information that does really needs to be known.This week, I want to talk about the other side of the coin: security. Jessica Robinson is an outsourced Chief Information Security Officer, founder, and CEO of PurePoint International and an expert in data security, cyber risk, and privacy. PurePoint International provides cybersecurity consulting and training for financial services, insurance, and other middle-market global companies with $100M-$500M in revenue. Listen to the full episode to hear:Where cybersecurity risks might live in your businessHow to assess the risk of a data breach in your own businessWhat steps to take to shore up the security of your business and keep both your AND your clients' information safeThe biggest concerns around digital privacy and online security for small business ownersLearn more about Jessica Robinson:the-purepoint.comFollow PurePoint on TwitterOther resources from this episodeWhat’s the difference between digital privacy and online security?Learn more about Susan:Scalespark Dollars + Decisions RoundtableTwitter @ScaleSparkLinkedIn @thesusanboles Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

Last summer, I started really thinking about values. What values do I have that I want to make sure I'm building into the DNA of my business? When it came right down to it, I realized that my core value—the one I wanted to make sure lived in every essence of my business—was safety.  The work I do with clients requires trust and vulnerability. It’s intimate. Money is a touchy, uncomfortable subject for most of us, especially when we're talking in specific numbers. There's SO much shame and guilt and inadequacy for most of us when it comes to handling our finances. Talking about what's not working behind the scenes in your business requires you to admit that everything isn't perfect. And that can’t happen if people don’t feel safe—both in the real, physical world and psychologically. So, I asked myself: if I want to build a company with the core value of safety, how do I actually go about doing that?In the last seven months or so, I embarked on this experiment in privacy-focused marketing and data security. It’s been a big part of every marketing and operational decision I’ve made. All this month, we’re talking about privacy and security on the podcast. It'll be part behind-the-scenes with me sharing some of the actual steps I've taken and how I thought through these decisions for myself. I’ll also be interviewing some of the experts that helped me educate myself along the way. One of the first things I did was remove Google Analytics from my website and replaced it with a tool called Fathom. It’s a really simple, lightweight privacy-first alternative to Google Analytics. My guest today is one of the founders of Fathom, Paul Jarvis. Paul and his cofounder, Jack Ellis, are two of my go-to experts on both digital privacy AND on the logistics of how to build that ethos into the DNA of your company. It's a core value for them as well, so they have to navigate the balance of promoting, marketing, and growing a company while still staying true to keeping data secure and while being respectful of individual's data AND transparent about what they're doing. Listen to the full episode to hear:Why we should care about data privacy—even when we have nothing to hideBalancing privacy with marketing and promoting needs of a growing company while still keeping everyone’s data privateWhy I decided to swap Google Analytics for FathomMy background in Security Forces for the Air Force and how that informs my approach to safety and security in my businessLearn more about Paul Jarvis:Fathompjrvs.comLearn more about Susan:Think Like A CFOScalespark Action PlanScaleSpark Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

The choices we make about how to earn, save and spend our money all ultimately come down to how we think and feel about money - and work.And whether or not you're "successful" with your financial choices is all a matter of your perspective. That’s why understanding and thinking about how you define success has a lot to do with whether or not you're satisfied—or feel successful—with your finances.If you live in the US, you live in a capitalist society that equates accumulation of money with success. The default assumption is that more money is better and that success is accumulating as much money as you possibly can. But examining that definition of success and figuring out if that's YOUR definition of success can be really powerful when it comes to handling your own finances - and can help shape your priorities and values that help define your own financial choices. That's a lot of what my guest today does with his clients. Meet Brian Plain. Brian is an Investment Advisor Representative with Gradient Advisors, LLC an SEC Registered Investment Advisory firm located in Arden Hills, Minnesota. Brian helps clients figure out what to do with their finances and helps them figure out a plan to meet their financial goals. A lot of that work means really examining what success means, what enough means and recognizing that, even with a good financial plan, as soon as you walk out the door with your plan, it'll change. But that doesn't mean you failed. Listen to the full episode to hear:How to examine your financial values and create your OWN definition of success and failure when it comes to your financial decisionsWhat does "success" look like when it comes to managing your money?How to incorporate what we really care about into our financial choicesLearn more about Brian Plain:Brian’s blogThe Reframing Failure Blog Postbrianplain.comLearn more about Susan:Scalespark Dollars + Decisions RoundtableTwitter @ScaleSparkLinkedIn @thesusanboles Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

I think there are three different stages when it comes to your business and your personal finances: pre-enough, enough, and post-enough.And at each stage, you'll have different priorities, weigh different choices, and view your world in very different ways. These definitions are mine and I think everyone will probably interpret the idea of pre-enough, enough, or post-enough in their own terms—but here's how I tend to think about it. Pre-enough is that stage when you may have a decent business, but you haven't hit that level of revenue where you're covering your costs and comfortably paying yourself what you need to be able to support your personal financial needs. In this stage, you're usually taking whatever work comes your way. It can be a difficult place where you are lacking in both time AND money because you're just trying to do whatever you can to get to that enough benchmark. Enough is where you have... enough. Your costs are covered, both business and personal. You're paying yourself and your team enough. You have enough to start building up some cash reserves and the choices and decisions you're making become a lot more about is this WORTH it for me? Is this client someone I WANT to work with? Is this the kind of work I want to be doing? Is this choice worth my time or energy? It's about using your resources effectively -- and the kinds of choices you make. Eventually, you might find yourself in the land of post-enough. Where your questions might be: what do I DO with all of this money?!? Where am I supposed to put it? And how do I use it responsibly? I wanted to explore this idea of pre-enough and post-enough by trying to follow someone's journey through these stages and beyond… to look at the choices they made, what helped them breakthrough that "enough" ceiling, and how their perspective changed in each of the different stages.Meet Rita Barry. Rita is a certified measurement marketer. She founded her company, a boutique digital marketing optimization consultancy based in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, in 2009. Rita Barry & Co. is a relationship-driven company focused on metrics, and they help select 6 to 8 figure female-led businesses take control of their numbers so they can transform their marketing campaigns and drive more sales.Rita deals with numbers and measuring success all day long and this journey to and through enough has been one she's spent a LOT of time thinking about. Listen to the full episode to hear:Step-by-step through the journey to (and past) enoughWhat enough means to RitaWhat it looked like pre-enough and what she did to break through and past enoughHow her goals and what she was concerned about changed throughout her journeyWhat she does, now that revenue benchmarks don't mean quite as much.Learn more about Rita Barry:ritabarry.co/breaktheceiling@ritabarryco on InstagramConnect with Rita on LinkedInLearn more about Susan:Scalespark Dollars + Decisions RoundtableTwitter @ScaleSparkLinkedIn @thesusanboles Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

What's YOUR earliest memory of money? Mine is going with my parents to open my own bank account at our local credit union. A lot of our experiences with and stories around money come from our childhood: how we saw money handled and what we got told about money, to name a few.And that stuff sticks with you. All of us have a completely unique and individual relationship to money that's influenced by not JUST those factors, but also the impact of every decision (good or bad) we've made with our own money and the impact of every decision (good and bad) we've seen OTHER people make with THEIR money.Your relationship with and access to money is impacted by your societal class, your demographics, and your generational wealth (or lack thereof). It's also influenced by the society you live in -- and if you're in the US, at least, that means a capitalist society. One where power and money are often interchangeable and where the depth of inequality is stunning -- and only getting more dramatic. Some of the workaround examining our relationship to our money also needs to examine how the system we live in impacts that relationship. Because it DOES. Once we understand that, we can start thinking about our relationship to money in a much broader view -- and we can start considering using our businesses as a means to start evening out some of that inequality. My guest today spends a lot of time thinking about, talking about, and teaching this work. Bear Hebert is a radical life coach, social justice educator, and anti-capitalist business consultant. In work and in life, Bear actively looks at the intersections of power and privilege and will ask you to do the same, pushing both you and your business in the direction of more liberated moments. Their current offerings include Anti-Capitalist Business Consulting and their online course, Freely: An Anti-Capitalist Guide To Pricing Your Work.Listen to the full episode to hear:The value of doing money mindset workHow your relationship to money affects just about every area of your business, including a deep dive on pricingHow Bear approaches making their services more accessible And what accessible actually MEANS in the first place...Learn more about Bear Hebert:bearcoaches.comAnti-Capitalist Business ConsultingFreely: An Anti-Capitalist Guide To Pricing Your Work Follow Bear on InstagramLearn more about Susan:Scalespark Dollars + Decisions RoundtableTwitter @ScaleSparkLinkedIn @thesusanboles Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

You're not a spreadsheet and you're not a calculator. You're a person with experiences, feelings, and history. But when most of us think about managing money, we think about it like it's math. We expect to make decisions about money like a calculator. But managing your money is actually more like figuring out psychology than math. Human beings don't make decisions like a calculator. We make decisions emotionally—and that includes financial ones. Learning how to manage your money well is part skill, sure. But a whole lot more is about examining your own relationship with money and dealing with all that baggage you're bringing to the table.How you think about money, the choices you make with your own money, and the relationship you have with it is ultimately impacted by a lot of stuff BESIDES just those decisions. It's influenced by what you learned about money as a kid. It's influenced by your reactions to previous decisions you've made with your money - both good and bad. We all have a completely unique and individual relationship to money that's influenced by all those factors. By examining that relationship, we can understand WHY we do the things we do and think the way we think, identify those influences -- and ultimately be able to make more conscious choices about what we do with our money.All this month we're going to examine the psychology behind money and why we think the way we do about it. To kick us off, I want to talk about buying things because that's where most of us start thinking about money. What should we buy? Or even SHOULD we buy something? We're bombarded with messages every day that encourage us to buy, buy, buy. Sometimes we even get told that it's patriotic. But WHY do we buy what we buy? That's what I want to know. And, as it happens, I know someone who LOVES geeking out on buying and marketing psychology. Meet Margo Aaron. She's a psychological researcher, turned marketer and the founder of That Seems Important, which is quite possibly my favorite blog in existence. She also co-hosts "Hillary and Margo Yell at Websites", an award-winning show about marketing and teaches writing and marketing to business owners. When I want to nerd out on the psychology behind marketing, Margo is my go-to. Listen to the full episode to hear:How shopping was INVENTED (yes, I said invented!)Why we buy things we WANT instead of only things we needHow to ethically use the power of psychology for good in your marketingLearn more about Margo Aaron:thatseemsimportant.com Marketing Masterclass: The Art and Science Of Getting People To Care on SkillshareWhy We Buy Things We Don’t Need on MediumLearn more about Susan:Scalespark Dollars + Decisions RoundtableTwitter @ScaleSparkLinkedIn @thesusanboles Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

What if you could change the way you price your services and double your revenue without bringing on any new clients or changing anything about HOW you work with your clients? Oh, yes, it’s possible!Sometimes, just switching up how you're pricing your services can have a dramatic effect on your overall profitability—and I don't just mean raising your prices—but reimagining how those prices are structured in the first place.We've been talking this month about creative strategies around pricing or packaging your services. And as part of that exploration, I wanted to re-air an interview that I did with Lacey Sites from a Lit Up Life in 2019. Lacey is a business mentor and success coach for high-performing women entrepreneurs and she created a unique revenue sharing pricing structure that allowed her to scale her one-on-one coaching business and dramatically grow her profits without bringing on a single new client. This unique model allowed Lacey to double down on her investment in each client, reap the rewards when their work with her pays off—and it also creates a pricing structure that builds trust and represents the true long-term partnership she wants to build with each client.This episode originally aired in December of 2019. It's been one of the most listened-to episodes ever and I think that's because it creates a model that allows you to genuinely grow and scale a service business without having to give up the close 1-1 client relationship. Listen to the full episode to hear:Increasing revenue without increasing work by using a revenue or profit-sharing modelThe logistics of actually creating a revenue-sharing modelHow a revenue-sharing model requires Lacey to filter her clients more carefully The impact that shifting to this pricing model had on Lacey’s businessLearn more about Lacey Sites:alituplife.comLITerally Podcast With Lacey Sites@alituplife in Instagram@A Lit Up Life on FacebookFacebook Group: The Lit Up and Loaded EntrepreneurLearn more about Susan:Scalespark Dollars + Decisions RoundtableTwitter @ScaleSparkLinkedIn @thesusanboles Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

Imagine your ideal way of working with a client. For me, it's working ALL in on a single project. I'm someone who likes going 100% or 0%. I'm either all in or I want to shut my brain completely off. What does it look like for you?This month, we've been talking about creative offerings and pricing strategies this month and thinking generally about how we offer and price our services. I talked to Kate Strathmann in Episode 59 about using pricing strategies to create more equitable businesses. I also talked with Rob Howard in Episode 60 about how to create offerings that build recurring revenue and strengthen relationships, even in an industry that's traditionally very project-oriented. Today, I'm talking to Hunter Niland Welling, my business’ Chief Marketing Officer. She is a marketing consultant and coach for women growing high-end service-based businesses. I wanted to bring Hunter on the podcast because she has a way of working with her clients that, when I experienced it as a client, was so effective that I actually shifted my OWN work with my 1:1 clients to the same model. Hunter has created what I like to call Recurring Intensives. It is a PERFECT model for folks like Hunter and me who REALLY like to go all in and work in an intensive style while building long-term relationships with their clients and creating recurring revenue. If you're unfamiliar with intensives or intensive-style offerings—which you might also hear referred to as VIP days or a Buy-My-Day kind of offering—they are short, very dedicated time blocks that are normally used to implement a specific project.What Hunter and I do is create one of these VIP days every month for our clients. Each month, we spend an entire day dedicated to a single client. This format works well for us because we get to work in a way that feels right for us but it also benefits the client because they get to see results immediately without wasting a ton of time in meetings. For the client, it's short and sweet and then the results show up that same day.If you want to get a better idea of some different intensive formats, take a listen to Episode 12 where I talked to Ashley Gartland and Hailey Thomas about the different ways they've implemented intensive-style offerings in their businesses.Listen to the full episode to hear:How to combine intensive-style offerings with recurring revenueHow Hunter developed intensives as the right model for her and her clientsThe kind of impact she's seen on both her business AND her clients as a result of implementing recurring intensivesLearn more about Hunter Welling:theagenshe.club@theagenshe on InstagramListeners can get a free 12-month membership in The AgenShe Club, using code BREAKTHECEILING or simply use this link to claim your discount!Learn more about Susan:Scalespark Dollars + Decisions RoundtableTwitter @ScaleSparkLinkedIn @thesusanboles Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

When you think about the relationships you build with your clients, what does that look like? Are you setting it up from the very first touchpoint to be a long-term relationship? Or do you approach it as a one-and-done kind of thing?Neither is better than the other—but your business values influence your business model, rippling out into how you build relationships, do your work, and create your legacy. Last week, I talked with Kate Strathmann about using pricing strategies to move towards creating more equitable businesses. We talked about making sure that you’re using strategies that make sense for YOUR business and how the pricing strategies you choose are one way to build your values into the DNA of your business. Your values SHOULD be a part of your pricing and business model choices from day one and my guest today has really taken that idea to heart. Meet Rob Howard, the founder and CEO of Howard Development & Consulting, the web development firm that creative agencies trust when every pixel matters. One of Rob’s core values is building relationships—and not just ANY relationships. To him, long term relationships with both his clients and with his team are essential to business. He treats clients as friends—folks he’s going to be working with for 5 or 10 years, at least. And several of his team members have been with him for a decade.Rob’s created some pretty unique offerings that reflect that value and we’re going to talk all about it today on the podcast.Listen to the full episode to hear:Why Rob has something that he calls an Assurance Plan which is a hybrid retainer that allows him to continue to work with his web design clients long termWhy Rob offers a 30-day satisfaction guarantee on his workThe logistics behind Rob’s offerings and how these are just a few of the ways that he infuses relationship-building into every aspect of his agency How to create offerings that embody your company valuesDetails on crafting ALL your services around a long-term recurring relationship modelLearn more about Rob Howard:The Agency Owner's Guide to Hiring Web DevelopersConnect with Rob on LinkedInLearn more about Susan:Scalespark Dollars + Decisions RoundtableTwitter @ScaleSparkLinkedIn @thesusanboles Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

What kinds of changes are you thinking about for next year? Are you making a pivot? Focusing on taking a break? Diving deep into improving at your craft? Maybe you're thinking about raising your prices?One of the changes that you might be considering is a shift in your business model, or how you package your services—or even how you price them. The decision about how to price, package, or accept payment for your services can be a bit of a challenge, especially in a service business where the choices are limitless. Those decisions say a lot about your business: who you want to work with, how you want to engage with them, and what your values as a company are.The strategies and psychology behind pricing your services can affect the behavior of your potential clients. It can serve as a filter to make sure you're bringing in the RIGHT clients or customers. Low prices aren't going to attract enterprise clients. Likewise, super high prices are going to be a barrier to entry for small businesses or individuals looking to work with you. You can use your pricing to create exclusivity—BUT, you can also use your pricing to create access and to start moving towards using your business to create more social and economic justice. My guest today is Kate Strathmann. Kate is the owner and director of Wanderwell, a consulting and bookkeeping practice that grows thriving small businesses while investigating new models for being in business. Wanderwell integrates financial expertise with an empathic, vision-forward approach, and leads with the belief that businesses can help create a new paradigm that centers people, community, and the environment. Kate spends a lot of time exploring new techniques and strategies to create more equitable businesses and works with business owners to start thinking about how to implement them in their own business.Listen to the full episode to hear:The different pricing strategies you might consider using, like sliding scale or pay what you wish pricing modelsWhen these strategies make sense, and when a different strategy might be a better optionSome of the pitfalls that Kate's seen come up as folks start to implement some of these strategies (and how to avoid them)Learn more about Kate:Wanderwellconsulting.comFollow Kate on InstagramFollow Wanderwell on LinkedInLearn more about Susan:Scalespark Dollars + Decisions RoundtableTwitter @ScaleSparkLinkedIn @thesusanboles Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here