My Good Woman
Ep. 19 | 5 Things I'm Doing Differently In My Business This Year
Dawn Andrews:
Hello My Good woman, confession time you are catching me at a moment of reflection. If you're like most founders. You probably don't have a lot of time or take a lot of time to reflect on your previous year in business. By not taking that time to reflect you're actually doing yourself a disservice. You're not learning from your mistakes, but you're also not taking advantage of what went well.
In this episode, I'll share three wins and five things I'm doing differently in business this year that have made things better already. I'm sharing the dirty details and honestly, feeling a little vulnerable doing it, but it is all in the service of things going better for all of us in business. Let's dive in.
Hello My Good Woman. Do you smell that?
Ah, it's a fresh new year. Breathe it in. The start of a new year, has the effect of unwrapping a brand new toy to play with. But the greater gift might lie in looking back, playing with the older toy. Looking back at the year, seeing what worked and what didn't and how you can do things better now.
As a CEO, founder, or small business owner, it's easy to fall back on your tried and true methods for running your business. But I found that if you want continued growth and success, you have to stay open to new ideas and strategies. Last year I experienced exceptional business growth, tough lessons, lots of trial and error and some deep reflection.
That's why this year, I decided to make some changes in my business. In this episode of my good woman, I'm unwrapping a list of three things I learned last year and I'll share five specific things I'm doing differently this year that have already helped my business grow and progress. And could do the same for yours too.
Hello? Hello? Hello.
If we haven't met yet. I'm Dawn Andrews, the founder and CEO of Free Range Thinking, a boutique business consultancy that helps creatives and executives in the entertainment industry and beyond with business strategy and leadership training. We help our clients go from founder to CEO. To lead their businesses with the confidence to ensure future growth, big profits and happy clients because successful businesses start with inspired leadership.
You are listening to the My Good Woman podcast, where I talk with trailblazing female leaders to find out how they got there and how they make it all work. And sometimes I go behind the curtain of my business to share with you how I make it all work.
I feel privileged to be able to grow my own business. It is an adventure, a commitment. I think of it, like doing yoga on the top of a mountain in a windstorm. Owning a business, leaves me feeling rewarded and deeply challenged on a regular basis.
Starting the business felt like a gigantic risk leaving the stability and seeming certainty of corporate life more than 20 years ago. And I would do the same thing all over again today. There's no greater satisfaction than doing what I love and being able to make a difference for people. It's like a daily victory dance. And sometimes it is a very painful dance. It's an absolute gift to have the freedom and flexibility of being my own boss. The unlimited opportunity to learn, create, and grow while working with exceptional teammates and clients. And it's the hardest thing next to parenting that I have ever done.
The resilience and mental toughness, it has required continue to astound me. There's a constant need to grow and develop new skills as the business grows, which brings me back to that end of year reflection time. Learning to become a thoughtful planner has been a challenge for me. In fact, some years I was moving so fast I didn't take the time to reflect at all and lost all of the benefits of looking back.
So I'm doing it with you now.
And with that in mind, I will start with my three biggest accomplishments from last year. Here are the standout wins, actually, before I do that, I want to start with the umbrella. For some context, my business grew 62% last year.
My business grew 62% last year. Yeah. Oh, yay. Oh,
That means we more than doubled our revenue and the workload and follow-up that came with it. I had a project manager and an HR expert working with me, but it also meant less time for marketing and business development. Which is always a challenge for service based business owners. When you go through a growth spurt, you spend all of your time servicing the new clients and you stop marketing.
So with that context and background.
WIN NUMBER ONE
I hired a full-time marketing coordinator.
I needed somebody to have their eye on that ball so that I could focus on other things. Because let's be honest, this has been a mostly one-woman show. I've had assistance at different points throughout the course of my business. I've had other coaches and consultants working with me and working for me.
But I was challenged to figure out the best uses for everyone in my particular business. I didn't need somebody to be a full-time personal assistant, grabbing coffee or running errands. And I didn't need somebody to manage my calendar full time because once I fill up my consulting schedule, there just aren't that many shifts on a regular basis. It's kind of set it and forget it.
I would find however that there were certain times of the year that I needed more support, but not in an ongoing day-to-day way. So I often struggled to find enough things for my assistants to do consistently.
Have you ever experienced that in your business?
It wasn't that I couldn't find just random things for somebody to do, but for my business to work well, I needed to find whole areas that somebody could own, that they could be responsible for and oversee completely. And as my business has grown and changed, figuring out what those areas of responsibility were was challenging. And this is something that happens a lot with small businesses with startups.
The actual constitution of the business and the strategy of how the business makes money, may be changing a lot over time. And so hiring and finding the right fit and the right people. It's not the same as it is in a corporate setting. When you're in a startup, when you're in a small business, there is so much changing all of the time that finding discrete areas for somebody to take over so that you can relieve some of the pressure as the business owner, can be really challenging.
And if I'm really honest, there was another factor that was blocking me from seeing the possible areas that somebody could take over. And it was the belief that nobody could do it better than me. I couldn't see the forest for the trees in my own business, because I was unwilling to let other people be better at something that I was, and that was a big ouchy moment.
At Free Range Thinking we have expertise in designing hiring strategies and helping to find, hire and onboard amazing team members. But I was struggling to do that myself. Until this past year. So finally deciding on a marketing coordinator, somebody to really oversee the production of everything related to marketing was a big deal. It was a breakthrough.
Julissa my production coordinator who is focused solely on doing marketing and sales is not doing the selling for me. But she is doing everything else that supports making sales.
She manages my marketing calendar and campaigns. She designs and schedules my social media. She edits the podcast and helps coordinate communication with my guests and much, much, much more. This has been a game changer for growth and visibility for Free Range Thinking and the My Good Woman podcast.
Having Julissa on board full time has freed up huge amounts of time for me. Because the best part of bringing on skilled new team members is being able to set them up for success and release them to do the work. So that I can focus on the long-term vision. Manage the client work and focus on business development.
This has changed the game for me and just a big shout out to Julissa herself.
WIN NUMBER TWO
I massively upgraded my marketing process.
When it comes to marketing, do you think about your process? Again, small businesses, startups, founders, entrepreneurs. Marketing can be a really haphazard, spray and pray approach until you get the hang of it. And so it would seem like all of this happened after bringing on a marketing coordinator, but it actually happened before.
I got to a point where I couldn't take it anymore. I was spending so much time planning and organizing social media or figuring out what kind of email to write to my clients or figuring out what mailing I wanted to send. Marketing was a full time gig on top of my full-time gig. And it's what helped me see the need for a marketing coordinator more clearly.
What I really recognized is that once you've been in business for a few years, what you started needs a refresh. A new strategy, a new website, new messaging. And then as you begin to serve, you start to get clearer around the problem set that clients have, and the types of clients you'd like to serve. Which means a new strategy, a new website, new messaging.
It's just like my kids growing out of their shoes every six months.
And then I've noticed that about every five years for me, a massive upgrade is required. It's like taking everything apart, starting over again, but from a smarter and more seasoned place. In the 20 plus years I've been in business I feel like I've run, easily, four different businesses, if not seven or eight. And every time you change it up, you've got to change up your conversation.
Your business may become more stable, but it's never finished. The longer you have it. The more constantly you're refining it.
And most recently it was time for a massive refresh. So I worked with Smart Alpaca Marketing, we went through all of my messaging again. We refined my ideal client types again; Founders, CEOs of creative companies. High level executives leaving corporate and starting businesses and women on the rise in leadership. That's a lot of different client types, but it's who I work with. And I will tell you that I had to refresh all of my service offerings and my pricing to go with it.
This refresh also encompassed launching a companion website to FreeRangeThinking.com I now have DawnAndrews.com the umbrella hub for all the things that I'm doing. Consulting, training, speaking and the podcast. And we also have a new cadence for continuing to speak to our audience. Podcast interviews with female leaders and my business go live every Tuesday.
Bits of business wisdom and behind the scenes of my business happen every Thursday, new blogs packed with ways to improve leadership and business strategy go live on Fridays. And our value packed emails with behind the scenes access, downloads, templates and tools go out to our private email list on Wednesday. I basically took the business down to the studs last year and rebuilt it. And from that new foundation, we built a marketing strategy.
Whew.
A couple of takeaways from going through that process. One don't do it yourself. You can't see the tip of your nose. You need to be able to be in a conversation with a really skilled and smart marketing strategist. And the second big takeaway is Don't do it unless you have a system to manage all the moving parts.
AirTable helps me track the workflow of everything related to marketing the campaigns, the posts, the emails, where the podcast goes, how it all comes together. The system is custom and scalable at the same time. And there is no way that this business could run the marketing that it does without it. Honestly, I am still building consistency with all of this. But I could never have done it without the upgraded system.
And I have to say, I'm pretty freaking proud of myself, y'all. Rebuilding all of those systems last year was an arduous process. It was a full-time job on top of a full-time job on top of a full-time job. It was a lot. I definitely have shiny object syndrome, but more on that later.
But it was so worth it because now I can continue to scale and grow my business and that feels great. So moving on. Question. Have you ever completed a big long-term goal? Or had a big long-term dream come true.
Well that is BIG WIN NUMBER THREE, for me, which is launching this podcast.
The very one you are listening to right now. This has been a passion project of mine. I recorded an interview with a good friend of mine more than 10 years ago, with the intention of starting a podcast. At the very beginning of when podcasts were launching on the apple platform. This has taken a long time to get here and I am deeply passionate about women in leadership and elevating women in leadership across the board everywhere.
You already know that I had a second full-time job with redoing the marketing. Launching the podcast was my third full-time job. I say this, not to brag at all, anytime you're running your own business you usually have at least three work streams going at the same time. You have the sales work stream where you're marketing and bringing in new clients.
You have the service workstream where you're doing the work with those clients. And then launching the podcast was my third work stream plus marketing. It was like underlying marketing was underlying the whole thing. You can't run a business without having multiple workstreams going at the same time.
Launching this podcast took more than six months of focused work above and beyond normal work hours. There were many up at 4:00 AM work before work sessions and learning a whole new industry instead of tools, and I'm still getting settled in. I'm sharing this because I want people to be able to see the struggle. I don't want you to get mired in it or depressed by it, but I want to be real about the fact that it takes a lot of work and a lot more time than you think.
And what you see on the outside, the polished up marketing presentation, the finished and edited podcast. There are hours and hours, sometimes weeks, days, months, and years of work. And learning and expertise that it took that person to get there. And I want to encourage you that whatever you're excited about whatever you're dreaming about. Start now and believe in yourself and do it and get some help.
Because there were a few things that made this podcast possible and I want to share them with you. I invested in the Wit and Wire Podcast course with Melissa Guller. She is fantastic. That course is fantastic. This course was a podcast build and launch program and community that helped me with everything from finding the focus of the podcast to buying the right equipment and software, improving my interview skills and marketing it to the world.
I also invested in hiring Kathlena Shaughnessy as my podcast manager who helped me set up the systems behind the scenes to keep all the wheels turning. And I worked with Sarah Hanstock an excellent content marketing strategist to help shape the topics and repurpose the content. And there were many other people, including my family that had my back as this got up and running. And that was just the podcast piece of this business. So I learned a lot last year.
Whew those were three big wins and looking back on traveling that road made it so clear what needs to happen differently this year? So here are the five things I'm doing differently in my business this year.
Number one plan on Friday.
Have you ever watched a woman in business and thought I want to be her when I grow up. I am deeply influenced by the no nonsense, super clear planning approach from Ashlyn Carter at Ashlyn Writes. She's the planner that I want to be when I grow up.
In one of her YouTube videos she shared the book Tranquility by Tuesday by Laura Vandercam. And I read that sucker in one sitting.
In the book, Laura gives the tip to plan on Fridays. I used to be a plan on Sunday person. I liked being able to plan when I didn't have a lot of extra things going on, but it also meant it was cutting into my family time. The intention to plan was there, but often there would be no planning because Sundays are fun days. And for those of you that have been listening for a while, you know, planning has never been a strong suit of mine. My approach has typically been ready, fire aim, or move fast, break things and clean it up later.
I have big intentions. But I never get around to breaking them down into small enough steps that connect with the day to day. Unless there is a burning deadline. And then I will clear the decks work really hard, overextend myself and make it happen. This is not a sustainable lifestyle.
I am a super skilled visionary but I need support around me to be able to make concrete plans to follow through on that vision. And I also like to shut the doors and walk away on the weekends, which I haven't been so great at over the last year. So I was stuck. I wanted and needed to plan, but I didn't want to get it done on the weekends.
So I'm planning on Fridays. I have an hour on the calendar Friday afternoons right before I pick up the kids. So I have a hard out, I grab a little snack and I set the calendar for the following week. I look at the week after to see if anything big is coming my way. I run through the content and topics for the month. And I tweak anything that needs to be in the schedule. Add any additional blocks of time. I need to make my work match my plans in life. And then it is locked. No more changes for that week. That way I can count on it. My family can count on it. My team can count on it. And then I close the laptop and go enjoy time with my family.
We're only a few weeks into the year, but so far it's working. So I'll keep doing that and I'll let you know how it goes.
The second thing I'm doing differently in my business this year is committing to the one thing.
Productivity gurus and planning masters suggest having three big priorities in your business. That's still is true for me. But it diverges once I break it down during each month, week and day, and we are, I already confessed. Like I'm not super good at breaking things down. So this is how I've done it. I am choosing one thing to focus on. The one thing today was recording this podcast. Now it doesn't mean that that's the only thing I'll get done that day. It just means that hell or high water, no matter what that is the one thing that must happen today.
As I mentioned before, shiny object syndrome is a real deal for me. So focusing on one key priority each day, week or month really makes a difference not only to my progress, but my mental health. It's really easy for me to go down a rabbit hole of learning, analysis and perfectionism when there are too many things on my to-do list.
And I know myself well, I'm an expert starter and a medium level finisher. And when you match that up with the shiny object syndrome, it's not a good combination. It reminds me of when I was a starving college student. My dad would visit and take me to a fancy hotel buffet. I was hungry and all that fancy food was laid out so beautifully. I wanted to eat it all.
He would sidle up to me as I peruse the trays of fresh croissants and baguettes. Fill your plate with the high ticket items first, he would say, now I might argue that a chocolate croissant is my high ticket item, but that's for another day.
So with the shiny object syndrome and lots of starting and medium finishing, I would start a lot of inspired projects, but they wouldn't pull through to profitability or completeness or impact. But it would exponentially blow up my to-do list. And also make me upset that I wasn't finishing the things I started.
What he was trying to tell me is that you only have so much space in your belly. Put the best stuff in there first, the high ticket items. And how that plays out in my business. It may mean that significantly less get started during the year, but significantly more gets done.
Now each day, I'm asking myself, what is the one big thing that month, that week, that day. That most moves the needle toward my goals. This lives in my Daylite CRM task list on my Mac. And I also share it with my team to keep me on track.
So I am focusing this year on the one thing.
Are you ready for the third thing? Confession time. How often have you scheduled time in your calendar to complete something and then blown it off or scheduled something over it? Maybe you're in a very reactive position or business. Maybe a more important meeting showed up. Maybe you just needed to take a minute and goof off and not be the most productive robo worker ever.
I am raising my hand over here. And it is said that if you don't control your schedule, it will control you.
So the third thing I'm doing differently this year is diving into Day Theming.
Day Theming is a cousin of time blocking and task batching. And these things are for you Day Theming, time blocking, task batching are for you. If you juggle lots of different projects and responsibilities. If you spend too much time being reactive. Like responding to emails and messages. If your inbox is constantly processing things. It's for you. If you find your day chopped up by meetings, or if you're battling constant interruptions.
And in my case, especially if you struggle to find the time and mental space for big picture thinking and planning. Here are the differences between these three things. Here are the quick definitions of those three things. I grabbed them from, the Todoist website.
Time blocking is a time management method that has you divide your day into blocks of time. Each block is dedicated to accomplishing a specific task or group of tasks and only those specific tasks. And instead of keeping an open-ended to-do list of things, you'll get to, when you're ready, you start each day with a concrete schedule that lays out what your work on when.
And yeah. I'm not doing that. If you look at somebodies time block schedule, there literally is a time assigned to every single thing that they need to be doing every single day. I don't have time for that. And I'll spend all my time moving around these little tiny squares on my Google calendar. I'm not doing that.
Task batching on the other hand is when you group similar smaller tasks together and schedule specific time blocks to complete them all at once. By tackling similar tasks, you limit the amount of context switching you do throughout your day, which saves time and energy. That'd be like putting two 20 minute blocks in your schedule to process email. Which is more efficient than checking your inbox every 15 minutes. That's what task batching is. And I'm totally here for it.
And the last one day theming, which is my jam. Day theming is a more extreme version of task batching for people who have a lot of areas of responsibility competing for their attention. And this is true of most small business owners. In my business I have to pay attention to marketing, sales, product development, client service, and operations simultaneously. And instead of setting aside time blocks for each area of responsibility each day. I am devoting a full day each week to key responsibilities.
So here's what exists now. I would like you to welcome marketing Monday. Podcast Tuesday, repurpose Wednesday. Get her done Thursday and finance Friday.
And all of this overlays a background of client meetings throughout the week.
The reason I chose this method is because. I don't want to spend a lot of time moving blocks around on the calendar. I am already challenged to plan. And honestly the rebel in me, if you tell me that each time block has to be devoted to a particular thing, I will find a way to do none of those things.
So going back to the one thing again, I have one thing to focus on each day through those themes, and it's closer to the way my brain functions. When it's time to be in creation mode, like working on a podcast episode, I want to be fully immersed and not shift out of that head space. And when it's time to work with clients, I focus on having multiple conversations in the same day. And when it's time to work on the operational part of the business, then I put my head in that head space.
Something that I really took away in looking at Day theming. Is that I am both a right-brained and a left-brained person. My brain has to work in so many different ways to operate this business successfully. Day Theming has helped me game-ify my productivity and consistency with my effort. Theming the days gives me variety within the theme. Which still works for my creative side of my brain.
But it still focuses on the long-term goals of the business, which helps me consistently move towards my results. And the surprise benefit I've discovered is that when it's time to hire, I have a discrete set of responsibilities that are reflected in each day's theme that I can choose to outsource.
The next thing I'm doing differently in my business is documenting everything.
I'm clapping. Documenting everything documenting everything. This area of my business feels a little bit like a romcom. The protagonists, me and documentation meet. And hate each other. Then through trials and tribulations, they fall madly in love.
When I first started my business there, wasn't a big need to write down every process. I was the only one doing anything so why slow down to pull it into a Google doc? But as my business grew, the more systems and documentation were needed. Employee manuals process for posting on social, Brand Bible.
This was the meet cute part of me and documentation. And I still hated documentation. I despised writing everything down. I found it tedious and boring. And I was on constant lookout for someone else to pull it out of me or to do it for me. Man, that was a magic wand moment. For those of you out there looking for some blue ocean space to start a business. Pulling out processes and systems from small business owners. Oh, go to town. God love ya.
But my dream is that my business will ultimately run itself or be so well-documented that someone else can run it. And that cannot happen if everything lives in my head.
Documentation is the gateway to get skilled, help, help employees be autonomous, provide a consistent quality of service and create more free time for me. Writing everything down is the foundation of efficiency. So now in our rom com. Documentation is starting to grow on me.
In Getting Things Done, David Allen's amazing productivity book and a favorite book of mine, he makes the point that every time we shift context, we lose up to 40% of our productivity when we make that shift. And that adds up to a lot of time over the course of a year, and especially in the life of a small business owner.
For example, if you're making a bunch of phone calls and then you shift over to email, you lose productivity time in that space between shifting your brain from having conversations, the phone calls to writing conversations, the emails.
And sometimes up to 40% of your time. So I'm happy to report that last year I got engaged and finally married documentation using air table. My number one business tool. We built a hub. In it is a project management system, marketing and content creation system, podcast production system, client onboarding process and team training system. And now I am obsessed with documentation.
This year I've taken documentation to the next level. It is everywhere in my life. Even in my Google calendar. As I move through these themed days we talked about, I write down the exact steps of what I'm supposed to do in the descriptions of recurring calendar events in each time block.
For instance, empty my email inbox. I have the seven steps in the calendar block. Finance Fridays. I have everything I must do and the links to what I must do, inside that calendar block.
Specific content creation tasks for marketing Monday. Affirmations to start my day. Links back to my long-term vision. Those tasks, checklists, everything lives in the recurring Google calendar blocks so I literally know what to do with my time as I transition to that next activity and I can cut down the context, switching loss of productivity.
If you want to fall in love with documentation as well, I would love to share with you my list of what I've documented in my business to make it easier to run and a sample of what's in my Google calendar blocks.
Check the show notes for the link.
And the last thing that I'm doing differently in my business, though, I'm sure there will be lots of little things, is focusing on the long game.
I already talked about the one thing and that's usually the most urgent and important thing needed that day. But it is paired with the long game, the pepper to the salt. The salt is focusing on the one thing I need to do that week, month, day, that tracks towards my longer-term goals. But the Peppa is the long term vision.
I wrote out my vision for the next 10 years for my business and for our lives. I shared it on Facebook and I've shared a link in the show notes if you would like to see what I'm up to over the next 10 years.
And somewhere in the course of each day, I read through that whole vision. I do some affirmations and I set myself up for the day to get myself in the right head space. I might even read it several times through the day if I feel like I'm losing the thread, losing my inspiration or losing my mind.
Having a connection to that long-term vision puts everything back in perspective. And it reminds me that I've got a long journey ahead of me and it's important to manage my energy.
In episode seven, I shared all about my burnout. In episode four, I shared about my struggles with perfectionism.
I have learned over the past several years that I don't have to do everything myself. That delegation is crucial for growth. That I need to set clear boundaries. As a small business owner, it is easy to blur the lines between work and personal life. I do close my laptop and walk out of the office at the end of the week. But I would like to do that more and I'd like to do it earlier in the day.
With the long game in mind. I think about the most important goals that I have and I attach those to the time blocks in my calendar. That way I know that what I'm most committed to in the longer term has some deep work time.
There are so many urgent and important things that need to happen running a small business. They are necessary to keep the business running, but they don't necessarily build on and point towards that longterm success.
So I read through my vision every day I read through my affirmations and I make sure that on my calendar, there is some space, a couple of hours each week that is dedicated to moving that longer-term project forward. The project that is similar to this podcast that I might not see for 10 years. But I know that I'm connected to it. I know that I'm looking for partners for it. I know that I'm applying resources or money to it. And I know that I'm tracking towards it.
I've also made sure that there are spots in the calendar that are not spots in the calendar. It's open time to just goof around. Go for a walk. Watch a show. I like listen to an audio book, watch videos that make me laugh, hanging out with the kids. Just do something that completely takes me out of work mode.
If I'm playing the long game and I'm not celebrating and actually living the life that I'm working for. It's not worth it.
That's what the long game is about for me. Is making sure that even in the midst of my day, today, I still have a connection to the future. That's important to me to build.
So there you have it. My three big wins. Yay me. And the five things I am doing differently in my business this year.
I am planning on Fridays. Doing the one thing each day, week, month, and or quarter. I am Day Theming. I am documenting. And I am playing the long game.
Last year was incredible. I am so grateful for everything that happened and happy to be sitting here, kind of taking stock with you and happy to be sitting here, looking back on that success. And also being thoughtful and mindful of what I want to create this year and excited to see how that happens. I'll give you some updates on the podcast as we go, and let you know, what's unfolding.
If you liked this podcast and the resources and the tools and the realness that goes along with it, please like share, subscribe, pass it on. Grab all of these tools out of the show notes.
This process of reflection and planning takes me pretty much the month of December. Like it's, it takes a real serious amount of time. It's not like the whole month of December I'm sitting there.
Planning the whole time we already know I'm not a big planner. But it does take time to. Look through everything and reflect, and then go back to it and reflect like , it's a back and forth process. It doesn't all happen at one time. It takes a little time to unpack it. So I'm hoping that what I shared with you today is useful.
And beneficial to your business. And I thank you so much for joining me today on this episode of My Good Woman. Until next time.
Thank you for joining me this week. To view the complete show notes and all the links mentioned in today's episode, visit my good woman.com. And before you go, make sure you follow or subscribe to the podcast so you can receive fresh episodes when they drop. And if you're enjoying my Good Woman, leave us a review on Apple Podcast reviews are one of the major ways that Apple ranks their pods..
So even though it takes only a few seconds, it really does make a difference and helps our show grow. This episode was produced by me and Julissa Ramirez. Thank you again for joining me, Dawn Andrews in this episode of My Good Woman.