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

What if instead of spending tons of time creating complicated proposals for prospective clients, you just didn't? 

Maybe you believe your complicated, customized proposals help win you more business. But there’s a good chance you’re sacrificing profit and efficiency--without truly seeing gains in real revenue.

All this month we are talking about opting out–choosing not to do certain things in your business as a tool for freeing up your time, money, and brain space for more important things. 

I started off by talking with Michelle Warner about how she focuses in on just a few services and opts out of selling all the things.

I chatted with Brittany Berger about setting boundaries around the expectations of how you work, both for yourself and for your clients. 

Today I’m talking proposals with Rob Howard, founder of web development agency Howard Development & Consulting and creator of Automatic Freelancer, a mentorship program for freelancers.

For Rob, the crux of the proposal process is reducing your sales time. 

You can quickly spend a ton of time, often unpaid time, preparing proposals to pitch projects to clients even if they never end up hiring you.

This time can really suck the profit out of any project. 

Rob has developed a system that allows him to give accurate quotes on the initial call and send out proposals within 15 minutes of getting off that call. 

It's a system that saves a ton of time, and dramatically increase his profit per hour without changing the deliverable he’s actually providing to clients.

On today’s episode:

• How Rob’s 30-Minute Profitable Proposal System sets him up to make a quick and accurate decision resulting in a proposal that makes the most sense for the client 
• How having a proposal process that makes clear what you are selling and how much you are selling it for takes away a lot of the stress of selling 
• Why delivering a proposal to your client quickly instills a greater amount of confidence in your ability
• How Rob breaks his proposals down in terms of the size of offer: small, medium, and large
• Why profit per hour per client is the only metric Rob chooses to track on a regular basis
• And how when you develop the mindset of an owner building a business, it sets you up for growth and success down the road

Links:

• The 30 Minute Profitable Proposal System
• Better Proposal Study
• Scalespark Dollars + Decisions Roundtable
• Twitter @ScaleSpark
• LinkedIn @thesusanboles

Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

We have the freedom to design just about any business we want. We can work with clients in a hundred different ways to deliver our service. 

But how that works has a lot to do with the boundaries you set in place. 

Boundaries are expectations, guidelines, and frameworks around how we want our work and our lives to happen. They're a really effective way to both deliver better customer service and make your business more efficient. All while building more resiliency into your processes. 

Today, I continue our month’s theme of opting-out by talking with Brittany Berger, founder of digital media company Work Brighter. 

Brittany’s boundary game is strong. 

When building Work Brighter, Brittany made the conscious decision to prioritize the mental health and personal life boundaries that make room for unproductive things like rest, self-care, and fun. 

For her, boundaries are a powerful tool for streamlining and increasing her operational capacity. By choosing how she works with clients, when she works with clients, and who she works with in the first place, Brittany is explicitly setting expectations for how they will be working together. 

By establishing these boundaries she is not only taking care of herself she is also ensuring that she will continue to have the capacity needed to continue helping high achievers and productive unicorns go beyond just working smarter to a better version of productivity.

On today’s episode:

• Why Brittany has opted-out of the normal method of doing one-on-one business and instead leverages her strengths and interests in ways that are more profitable. 
• Why she defines success in her business in ways that are not necessarily tied to profit or revenue
• Why she only checks her email twice a week so she can focus on deep work and self-care
• How she manages energy and focus by doing the hardest thing first, preserving the most energy for sustainable productivity
• The transparent guidelines she uses to reinforce boundaries with her clients
• And how making it difficult for herself to access social media has been a great tool for freeing up space in her business

Links:

• Work With Brittany at Work Brighter
• @workbrighter on Instagram
• @thatbberg on Twitter
• The Slackification of the Family Home–The Atlantic Magazine
• Scalespark Dollars + Decisions Roundtable
• Twitter @ScaleSpark
• LinkedIn @thesusanboles

Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

Opting out of business-as-usual practices  or deciding to buck your industry trend can be a really powerful point of differentiation for service businesses 

When you opt-out of using corporate jargon or ridiculously complicated implementation processes, you can really stand out from the crowd. 

And, making this choice can also be a really great tool for increasing your operational capacity behind the scenes. 

By opting-out and choosing not to implement a cumbersome or overly complicated process, you free up your time. By choosing to not administrate the process and hire somebody to manage it for you, you save all that time, money and effort that you would have spent otherwise.

Today, I am having business strategist, Michelle Warner, back on the show to talk about how we both use opting-out as a tool to help our clients become more profitable and efficient. 

We talk about how Michelle helps service providers, coaches, and course creators drill down and focus on what's important, as well as how they can stop spending time on unproductive distractions and start designing profitable businesses.

On today’s episode:

• How Michelle uses an 80/20 framework to harnesses creative energy, turning it into something useful instead of something that can quickly derail us.
• How Michelle helps clients move away from their startup phase and start optimizing as a company
• The ways that doubling down on a single project has compounding effects and is uniquely beneficial to entrepreneurs  
• All the ways that entrepreneurs are naturally creators and how they can look to the art world for guidance and inspiration
• How you can take your financial metrics and turn them into qualitative choices for what you want your business to be.
• How we can slow down and build our awareness in our business with tracking and mindfulness practices 

Links:

• Where you can work with Michelle Warner
• Atomic Habits by James Clear
• Forte Labs - Building A Second Brain

Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

If you’re struggling to keep your head above water in your business and you can’t figure out how to break the ceiling and scale your business, then you should listen to this Break the Ceiling podcast with ScaleSpark Founder, Susan Boles. 

In the first few episodes of this series, Susan has focused on tackling default decisions, those decisions that you might have made in your business without thinking about them or realising that you had another choice. 

“Default decisions aren't necessarily good decisions or the right decision for your business.”

In the upcoming episodes however, Susan switches the focus from default decisions to opting out and why she advocates ‘Default to Simple’, the touchstone she uses when trying to figure out the solution to any problem in her own business, or her clients businesses. 

Because often, the next thing you have to do in your business process is just really simple. 

But before we go ahead and begin the next chapter, if you didn’t get the chance to listen to our series on default decisions, definitely go back and dig into them because they frame the upcoming episodes on opting out, and get you thinking about alternative options that you might not have considered in your business.

On today’s podcast:

• Why the tech that promises to make your life easier can just be another complication
• Why your business needs processes
• Why writing a list allows you to keep it simple
• How to simplify your process to get paid by opting out
• Why opting out is such a powerful tool
• Future guests on the podcast for the opting out theme

Links:

• Scalespark Dollars + Decisions Roundtable
• Twitter @ScaleSpark
• LinkedIn @thesusanboles

Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

In this special podcast episode, the shoe is on the other foot - Susan herself is on the receiving end of the interview. And she’s talking to Tara McMullin (who you might remember from the first ever Break the Ceiling episode.)

Bottlenecks in a business workflow process and complicated workflows can combine to create huge business growth headaches, not to mention potentially impacting your quality of work, resulting in poor customer satisfaction, or worse, letting things slip through the gaps. 

So Susan wanted to share this episode (first aired on Tara’s podcast, What Works) because she wants to discuss her experience of default decisions in software and technology. 

“When you're starting out, you don't know what you don't know.”

In this episode, Susan and Tara talk about why and when you should review your software tools, and how you can really use software to help automate your operations and address some operational capacity issues. They also talk about the challenging work of implementing new software and how to make the change a little bit easier and more effective.

So tune in to hear all that and more. 

On today’s podcast:

• What Susan typically finds is standing between her clients and tripling their revenue
• The basis for business default decisions
• Why hiring more people won’t fix an operational capacity problem
• Mistakes small business owners make when they try to use software to expand their capacity
• Why software can be another bottleneck to workflow process rather than an aid
• The audit process Susan carries out for each individual business to figure out what software could help them
• How Susan makes software recommendations for each business
• How to implement a new software system painlessly
• Common mindset problems business owners face when switching software

Links:

• Walk through of how to do a software audit
• What Works podcast
• Zapier - automation platform that connects SAAS tools
• Xero - accounting tool
• Scalespark Dollars + Decisions Roundtable
• Twitter @ScaleSpark
• LinkedIn @thesusanboles

Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

Are you looking to break the mold with your business model? Are you one of those business people that make very deliberate decisions and knows that default decisions just can’t apply to your business? Then you need to meet Pia Silva. 

If you haven’t heard of the powerhouse that is Pia Silva, then you’re in for a treat. Pia is the founder of Badass Your Brand and Worst of All Design, and she made a very deliberate decision to step away from the default agency model. She knew she had to structure her business in a way that suited her preferred working style, while ensuring it remained wholly efficient to meet her needs and the needs of her clients. 

“This model came about because a year prior, a business coach of mine had said to me, ‘you're selling $30,000 projects, you're looking for clients who have $30,000, but you're networking with people who think you're great, yet they don't have $30,000, they have $3,000. So maybe you don't want to keep saying, oh, sorry, you don't have $30,000, so forget you, and instead think of something to sell them. Just come up with something you would sell someone if they had $3,000.”

And in the space of just a couple of days Pia had pivoted her whole business from chasing big projects via a traditional agency model, to making more money with a smaller project model. 

On today’s podcast:

• Break the ceiling by breaking the default agency model
• Why project management tools don’t work for every business
• Using a lead product and a bullseye product
• The freedom of transparent pricing
• How to figure out your pricing strategy
• Increase your price as you increase your value
• Figure out a model that works for you and what you want out of life
• Create a marketing structure that means you constantly have leads coming up
• Why the big agency model can’t work for smaller businesses

Links:

• Badass Your Brand - the impatient entrepreneur’s guide to turning expertise into profit
• Scalespark Dollars + Decisions Roundtable
• Twitter @ScaleSpark
• LinkedIn @thesusanboles

Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

We’ve been focusing our attention on default decisions in the last couple of episodes- those choices that you make about how to run your business. And a lot of these decisions happen without us even realizing we're making a choice, especially at the beginning of our businesses. 

But sometimes those choices we didn't know we made come back and bite us in the butt when we need to make the transition from experimentation mode or validation mode into growth mode.

I chat with business designer Michelle Warner about business models, because lots of our default decisions are actually built into the model we choose. Michelle helps coaches, consultants and service-based entrepreneurs grow their businesses by showing them how to prioritize what matters and skipping what doesn’t. 

More importantly, Susan and Michelle discuss how to make that all-important decision of crossing the chasm from experimentation entrepreneur mode to a business model that's designed to grow, and how not to drive yourself crazy along the way.

On today’s podcast:

• Why business design is a hybrid approach to creating your business model
• The inspiration behind moving from a multi million dollar tech startup to business design
• The symptoms of knowing when you’ve hit the ceiling in your business
• The decisions entrepreneurs make over and over again
• How to choose your business priorities
• Focusing your team to do the 80%, leaving you free to do the 20% fun stuff

Links:

• www.themichellewarner.com
• Michelle.warner
• Scalespark Dollars + Decisions Roundtable
• Twitter @ScaleSpark
• LinkedIn @thesusanboles

Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

Are you an entrepreneur who thinks marketing is prosaic, a series of boxes that need to be checked off in a certain order? Are you too scared to break the ceiling with your own brand of personal marketing because it’s not something that you’ve been told to do? Then you should listen to Margo Aaron on today’s podcast, because she is someone you need in your life. 

Margo Aaron is the cohost of #HAMYAW and the author behind That Seems Important. She accidentally ended up in marketing and today she talks and writes about how to connect authentically with customers, and how to use ethical marketing to sell better, and more, online. 

“People really don't understand marketing, in part because marketers do a really bad job of explaining it. And they very very unethically sell it.”

On today’s podcast:

• People don’t pay for strategy, they pay for outcomes and results
• Why Margo was so nervous about launching ‘That Seems Important’
• You don't have a marketing problem, what you have is a self-doubt problem
• You need to find the intersection between your business model and your personal disposition
• Why you shouldn’t measure your worth based on other people's benchmark success
• The importance of playing and seeing where a business goes rather than sticking rigidly to a plan
• Part of entrepreneurship is making things up - you are bringing something into the world that didn't exist before

Links:

• Hillary and Margo Yell at Websites
• That Seems Important
• Scalespark Dollars + Decisions Roundtable
• Twitter @ScaleSpark
• LinkedIn @thesusanboles

Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here

Welcome to this first episode of Break the Ceiling, the podcast where we'll talk about how you might structure your business, or even why you're in the business you're in in the first place. 

We're going to talk about financial decisions, hiring decisions as well as technology decisions, and give you some ideas to consider. But mostly, I just want you to start asking yourself, ‘why did I make this choice and does it still serve my business?’

My first guest in the series is Tara McMullin. Tara is a podcaster, writer, and a small business community leader. With over a decade of experience helping thousands of small business owners grow their business. She's on a mission to change the dialogue about what's really working and she believes that no one person has the answer to “what works” in small business.

Tara is the host of the What Works podcast, a top small business podcast that's been recommended by Forbes and Entrepreneur. And she's also the founder of the What Works network, a community hub for small business owners. 

She is also incidentally the person who came up with the name for this podcast.

On today’s podcast:

• Why the default decisions you make at the beginning of your business may actually be causing the problems that are limiting your ability to grow
• Not every framework or management tool works the same for each business
• Why ‘What Works’ is pretty much an entire business based around the concept of fighting default decisions
• Challenges associated with switching between different types of business models
• How to know when you’ve hit the ceiling
• Know where your skills lie and focus on doing that well - outsource the other stuff
• Why Tara’s personal growth will help her business break through the ceiling

Links:

• What Works - the podcast
• Scalespark Dollars + Decisions Roundtable
• Twitter @ScaleSpark
• LinkedIn @thesusanboles

Grab the Calm Service Design + Delivery Swipe File here