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

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 models
• When these strategies make sense, and when a different strategy might be a better option
• Some 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.com
• Follow Kate on Instagram
• Follow Wanderwell on LinkedIn

Learn more about Susan:

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

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On the podcast lately, we've been talking about how to manage change, how to become more resilient, and how to develop our skills in these areas—both personally and as leaders—so that our businesses can weather storms and so our team can stay calm, relaxed and supported.

I talked to Elatia Abate in Episode 54 about what it MEANS to be resilient and how much of a role mindset plays in our ability to be resilient. In the last episode with Lauren Caselli, you can see how that played out for her in real-life this year in how she both weathered a HUGE business change and how she dealt with the loss of the business she had spent almost a decade building.

Today I’m going to talk about the OTHER end of that change spectrum.

What happens when things go BOOM and you have to figure out how to manage that boom in your business at a time when your personal situation might actually mean that you have less time than ever to spend in or on your business?

Today’s guest is Alethea Cheng Fitzpatrick.

Alethea is the Principal and Founder of Co-Creating Inclusion, a diversity, equity, and inclusion firm with a focus on shifting culture and driving equity through strategic consulting, leadership and team development, workshop facilitation, and business integration. Alethea’s mission is to help people, teams, and organizations create culture transformation through inclusion and belonging in order to co-create the conditions where all can thrive and do their best and most fulfilling work.

Alethea is also the mom of 2 kids, 8 and 11-year-old boys, in Brooklyn. And, like a lot of us, she’s now running a business and being the main parent, at home, dealing with virtual school for both kids—all while her business has seen unprecedented growth this year.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• What 2020 has looked like for Alethea and how she’s figuring out how to balance business and homeschooling her kids—and how she’s being conscious about taking care of her own needs, too
• What techniques and systems she’s put into place to try and cope with all the changes that this year has brought
• How Alethea’s day-to-day looks as she manages having the capacity to work less but having MORE business than ever
• How to balance business and life when they're both changing

Learn more about Alethea:

• cocreatinginclusion.com
• Connect with Alethea on LinkedIn

Learn more about Susan:

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

Resources mentioned in this episode

• White Supremacy Characteristics by Tema Okun

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What happens when the worst-case scenario becomes reality? Every business owner I know has that nightmare that runs through the back of their head...

What if it all just stops?

What if no one needs my services and suddenly no one needs what I'm selling?

What do I do then?

For a lot of business owners, this has been the year where they had to figure out what the answer to those questions was.

How do you manage that change? Do you shut down? Do you pivot?

When everything stops, how do you decide what to do next? How do you actually get through that and lead your business through change? Or make the decision to actually close?

Today, I'm talking to Lauren Caselli. Lauren was on the show back in March in Episode 25. I talked to her about cash flow planning in a crisis right as the shutdown was really starting to take effect and Lauren's event planning business was heavily affected.

Lauren's been through a MASSIVE change this year, so I wanted to bring her back on the show to talk about how she's been managing the impact on her business.

Lauren Caselli helps womxn and gender non-binary folx get paid like the expert that they are. Lauren used to run an event planning business for tech, and after her best year ever in 2019, was ready to give 2020 a run for its money. Sadly, the opposite happened, but out of breakdowns come breakthroughs.

She is the founder of the Boss Lady Bash, a now laid-to-rest community of female entrepreneurs in Montana, and is working on launching The Money Club that helps womxn make strategic choices with the well-earned money that they're making.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How Lauren’s cash flow management skills gave her the time she needed to make strategic decisions instead of reacting out of panic
• Making a HUGE pivot in your business and how to stay resilient
• Processing grief as a business skill
• An update on what Lauren decided to do about her business this year 

Learn more about Lauren:

• laurencaselli.com
• Follow Lauren on Twitter
• Follow Lauren on Instagram

Learn more about Susan:

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

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What would happen if you had to step away from your business for a few weeks? A few months? Would everything come crashing to a halt? Or would there be a clear path forward for someone else to pick up the baton and keep your business going?

Being resilient means being able to bounce back from adversity, to pivot and reset after a change. But you only become truly resilient if you examine where your risks are. Where could hiccups happen? What could go wrong? And then you figure out a plan for how to handle that scenario if it really does happen.

We do this all the time with cash flow projections and with strategic planning in our businesses.

But we very rarely plan for what happens in the absolute worst-case scenario of you not being able to run your business.

As a business owner, YOU are a risk.

YOU built your business and most likely, it depends on you in some form or fashion to keep going. Even if you have a staff or other people that do a lot of the day-to-day work, they still look to you for direction. If you suddenly aren't there anymore, what happens?

That's what contingency planning is all about: making a plan for what happens to your business (and your personal business) if you need to step away for a while or you just flat out can’t run the business.

My guest on this episode, Mary Beth Simon, is an expert in planning for contingencies. Mary Beth is the founder of Niche Partnership Consulting where she helps business owners create plans for transitions and crisis. Mary Beth helps business owners teach those who depend on them so that they're prepared to step in if something happens and to minimize the suffering and prevent someone from experiencing added pain and struggle during already difficult times.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• Who should be creating contingency plans and what it looks like in the real world when you have to execute your plan
• How important your preparation is when it comes to ensuring your business can survive a big change 
• Tips for planning for a worst-case scenario 
• How being prepared for crisis helps you be resilient in your business and personal life 

Learn more about Mary Beth Simon:

• Free Contingency Planning Kit
• Connect with Mary Beth Simon on LinkedIn
• Follow Niche Partnership Consulting on Facebook

Learn more about Susan:

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

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As founders and business owners, we tend to build businesses that reflect us.

Our strengths become the strengths of our business. And, yep, our weaknesses become the weaknesses of the business… because we’re the ones who are building it.

That’s why investing in developing skills to strengthen how we personally deal with change creates a huge impact on how we approach leading our businesses through change.

If you listened to the episode with Elatia Abate, you know that the ability to be resilient and flexible in the face of change IS a skill and a mindset that you can work on. You can't control the change (because change is inevitable!)—but you can control how you react to it.

On today’s episode, I’m talking with Melody Wilding. Melody is a former therapist turned leadership and executive coach for smart, sensitive high-achievers who are tired of getting in their own way.

Melody is a licensed social worker and a former researcher at Rutgers University. She is also a professor of Human Behavior at Hunter College and she has a group coaching program all about building resilience.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How Melody uses systems and structures to help minimize stress, build resilience and manage change in her life and business
• Why being kind to yourself and empathetic to your team is a HUGE part of effectively managing a rapidly changing environment
• How to accept that during intense change, your bandwidth is a LOT smaller than it was
• Techniques and systems to building personal and business resilience in your own life
• How to find the right structures that minimize your mental load so you can take care of you and your team

Learn more about Melody:

• The 5-Minute Inner Critic Makeover
• The Haven: A Home for Sensitive High Achievers
• Connect with Melody on LinkedIn
• Follow Melody on Instagram
• Follow Melody on Twitter
• Follow Melody on Facebook

Learn more about Susan:

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

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Change is hard.

There's no real way around that.

It's disruptive, it breaks your flow and it takes time and resources to react to and manage changes as they happen. And yet, you and your business won't flourish without some change.

Being able to manage and adapt to change in a rapidly changing environment is one of the hallmarks of being resilient. But for most people, change means unknown and scary.

Our brains evolved to analyze and to predict—or try to!—what’s going to happen next. As humans, we’re hardwired to hate uncertainty. So, theoretically, the more "known" you can make the change before it happens, the more comfortable people will be with it.

But, right now... we're living in a world where there's no real way to make the change known. This is change that no one is really sure how to manage or when the pace of change will slow.

As overused as the phrase has become this year, it's unprecedented. NO one has a model for how to deal with everything 2020 has thrown at us. 

So... how DO we go about building up those change management muscles? How do we make ourselves and our business stronger and better able to weather this ever-changing environment?

Meet Elatia Abate. She is an entrepreneur, educator, and future-forward strategist. She partners with organizations that range in size from Fortune 500 to early-stage start-ups to help leaders make sense of the ever-growing disruption in our world and channel that disruption into tangible results.

And she has a line on her website that I just love. It says, "change is unpredictable. But we can still be ready."

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How resilience and change management are intertwined
• What does the future of work/future of business look like NOW?
• Strategies to exist and thrive in a constantly changing environment 
• What Elatia learned from her personal experiment in resiliency

Learn more about Elatia:

• elatiaabate.com 
• Connect with Elatia on LinkedIn
• Follow Elatia on Instagram

Learn more about Susan:

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

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What happens when you FULLY commit to something in your business?

What happens when you are completely, totally, 100% all-in?

This month we’re talking all about no-code tools and today’s guest, Layla Pomper, has taken her commitment to ClickUp—an extremely flexible no-code project management platform—to the next level.

You can use no-code tools like ClickUp to streamline and automate your internal processes and enhance your communication with clients. You can also build digital products, help your students learn more effectively, and add to diversity your revenue streams.

Some of the no-code tools out there are so flexible and so capable that you can actually run your entire business, pretty much end-to-end on them. 

Well, Layla is ALL IN with ClickUp. She uses it to bring in new clients by using it as her opt-in and as the topic of her YouTube channel. She uses it to communicate and manage her one-on-one clients. She uses it to manage her own team and all of ProcessDriven's operations. She even now has a small group learning program all about how to use ClickUp more effectively.

She went all in… and it's paid BIG dividends for her business and her clients.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How Layla’s using ClickUp EVERYWHERE in her business
• The impact she's seen by systemizing everything using ClickUp
• How to use no-code templates and tools as an opt-in and marketing tool
• How to get the most out of the no-code tools you're using in your business

Learn more about Layla:

• ProcessDriven
• ClickingUp Community
• ProcessDriven Collective 
• Subscribe to Layla on YouTube
• Follow Layla on Facebook
• Follow Layla on Instagram

Learn more about Susan:

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

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The landscape of software is changing: no longer do you need to know how to code to build what you need. Now, building software has been democratized. No-code tools allow you to build your own software which means you can build custom products, services and tools on your own without having to spend piles of money developing custom software.

There are lots of ways you can use this technology to benefit your business: you can streamline and automate internal processes, you can build tools and resources to diversify your revenue streams, and you can even use these tools to market your business and bring in new clients.

Oftentimes when we think about a product-based business, we think about physical products or about maybe a software-as-a-service business, but there are SO many more ways that you can harness no-code tools to build your own apps, resources, and tools.

This month, we're talking about how you can harness these no-code tools to increase your operational capacity, attract new clients, add new evergreen revenue streams—and ultimately grow your business. Last week, I talked to Jason Staats about using no-code tools internally to automate and scale processes and to improve client communication.

This week, we're talking about using no-code tools to actually build your own custom software products. My guest today is the queen of this. Brittany Berger is the founder of Work Brighter, a digital media company that helps productive unicorns go beyond working smarter to a version of productivity that makes room for “unproductive” things like rest, self-care, and fun.

She builds all kinds of no-code tools and resources and sells them and she uses them in a LOT of different ways. We'll talk about this more in detail during the episode, but Brittany sells the tools individually as stand-alone products. They make up a good chunk of the value proposition behind her community, the Work Brighter Clubhouse, and she uses them to help folks who take her courses implement faster and easier.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How Brittany’s business is structured around no-code tools
• How she comes up with ideas for new no-code products
• What her development process looks like to build and refine these products
• How to use no-code to build products and additional revenue streams 
• How to use no-code tools and resources to add value to a community or course

Learn more about Brittany:

• Work Brighter
• Work Brighter Clubhouse
• Follow Brittany on Instagram
• Productive Unicorns Group on Facebook
• Follow Brittany on Twitter

Learn more about Susan:

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

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Software has come a LONG way in the last decade or so. 

When I started my first business as a professional organizer in 2006, it was still pretty manual.  My business systems consisted of a website, Quicken, a label maker, some file folders, and printed out checklists. I needed physical signatures on my contracts and took checks as payments—and I had a fax number.

It might seem like it was a simpler time before—there was less to keep up with—but our systems were also cumbersome, inefficient, expensive and the idea of building a customized software tool was only available to big companies with big budgets.

Fast forward to today and we have apps and tools that can solve just about any problem in your small business with the click of a button pretty inexpensively. We can automate and streamline our workflows and take advantage of technology to operate a very lean, very profitable service business using tools that you don't need a degree in coding to figure out.

I'm talking about no-code or low-code tools, which means that the tools have been built specifically to enable YOU, someone with no background or experience in building software, to build your own custom tools.

And those tools are very, very powerful when it comes to operating a service business. They can be the key to you taking some time off and knowing that your systems are still flowing, clients are still being taken care of, your team knows exactly what to do. When harnessed, no-code tools can be THE thing that lets you scale to $2M+ with 2 team members. I've seen it happen.

And this month, we're talking about the different ways you can harness these no-code tools to increase your operational capacity, attract new clients, add new evergreen revenue streams—and ultimately grow your business.

To kick us off, I’m talking with one of my accounting friends, Jason Staats, who also happens to be a huge fan of no-code tools. Jason is a CPA in Salem, Oregon. He's a principal at Brenner LLP by day and accounting tech enthusiast by night. Jason spent his first 10 years in the tax profession and has now spent the last five years running a remote CAS team, working with staff and clients across the country.

Jason is especially interested in the intersection of the accounting industry and emergent technology—and, specifically, how we can turn the automation doom and gloom narrative on its head and show accountants how to proactively leverage new technology.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How to use no-code tools to scale operations (because the more efficient the workflow, the more clients you can serve with the same staff, and the more profitable you can be)
• Using no-code tools to automate workflow—both internal AND with clients
• How to leverage automated technology so client communication feels really personal 

Learn more about Jason:

• launchfa.com
• rlz.io
• Follow Jason on Twitter

Learn more about Susan:

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

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Is it worth it?

That’s the number one question I get about this podcast.

And it’s a good one because we should be evaluating any and every business decision based on the business results we’re expecting it to create. According to today’s guest, evaluating your podcast’s value and success can be evaluated based on if it drives results for your business, puts money in your bank account, gets emails into your inbox, or gets you sales calls."

In the series, Is It Worth It, I’ve been talking about investing in our businesses and trying to answer the question of whether or not an investment was a worthwhile one.

In this episode, I thought it’d be fun to take you behind the scenes and talk through how and why I decided to invest in starting this podcast, how it all works behind the scenes, and a look back a year into podcasting.

To help me answer the question of if it's been worth it, I’m delighted to bring my friend Tara McMullin to discuss just that. Tara is a small business strategist, host of the What Works Podcast,  and the founder of What Works, an online community for small business owners. Tara is also the co-founder of Yellow House Media, the company that helps produce this podcast.

Listen to the full episode to hear:

• How do you evaluate the ROI of a podcast?
• My decision-making process and how long I was willing to give it 
• The strategy behind my podcast and what business goals I was trying to achieve
• How much time goes into producing a single podcast episode 

Learn more about Tara McMullin:

• The What Works Network
• The What Works Podcast
• Yellow House Media
• Follow Tara on Instagram
• Follow Tara on Twitter

Learn more about Susan:

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

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