Financial and Lifestyle Freedom for UK Business Owners

In today’s episode, I’m speaking about moving from a spend mindset to a save mindset. So let’s dive in.

If you do not have those positive habits that you are starting to build around money, then it’s going to be really hard to start moving to a place where there’s more. So set aside some time to work on this because wishing on change will not change anything. It needs positive action. I hope that this episode has been useful for thinking about moving from a spend mindset to a save mindset. Episodes 22 and 26 of Uncover Wealth Radio will also be really helpful for you here to have a wee listen to you as well. 

I also want to invite you to step into the Uncover Wealth community. This is my private community on Facebook. You can search Uncovered Wealth community in the search bar or go to Annetteandco.co.uk/FB group. I do a live teaching there every single Tuesday for Training Tuesday, and I would love to have you there. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, let’s find the clarity in your numbers, increase your wealth, and get more money in your pockets.

In today’s episode, I’m speaking about what to do when you are fully booked, so let’s dive in. Well, if you find that your diary is rammed full of appointments with clients, then the first thing to ask yourself is, is it time to raise your prices?

Do you need to have a look and see if your prices are in alignment with the value? Do you need to revisit that? This is something that I highly recommend you look at pretty much every quarter in your business to see if your prices and value are aligned and whether or not you need to raise your prices in order to progress your business forward.

The second thing that you need to think about when you are fully booked is your people plan. Do you have the right people to support you in delivery to your clients? What does that look like? Can you take someone else on board in your business to help with the delivery side, so that you can open up more slots between the two of you to bring on more clients and increase your business that way?

Number three, examine your schedule. Are you really fully booked, or have you got periods of time where you’re kind of hanging around between client meetings, you’re hanging around between appointments and you’re not using your time as efficiently as you perhaps could be in your business?

The fourth thing to think about is setting up a waiting list. So if you really are truly booked, if your prices really are reflective of your value, if you really have that people plan dialled in and it’s where it needs to be and if you’ve examined your schedule and you really don’t have any more time in the day to be dedicating to client work, then you need to set up a waiting list so that when clients drop off, which naturally happens with churn and attrition, then you have people waiting in the wings who want to be working with you. You can get that waiting list in place. You can even potentially take a holding deposit from people on your waiting list, so that you have them ready to come in as soon as an open slot exists.

And the fifth thing to do when you are fully booked, if all of these are in place, if you’ve got all of those previous four things working, raising your prices so they’re in alignment fully with the value you give, looking at your people plan and bringing on people to support you in terms of client delivery, examining your schedule to make sure you are really truly booked and then setting up a waiting list, and if that waiting list gets perhaps a little bit longer, then you might want to think about referring to other people in your space and earning a commission, so referring the leads and potential clients that you have that you’re receiving in to other people that you know, like, and trust in your industry so that that individual can be supported in their way that they need to for the service that they need.

So, I hope this episode has been useful for thinking about what you might want to do when you are fully booked. I also want to invite you to step into the Uncover Wealth community. This is my private community on Facebook. You can search Uncover Wealth Community in the Facebook search bar or go to AnnetteAndCo.co.uk/FBgroup I do a live teaching there every single Tuesday for Training Tuesday, and I would love to have you there.

Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, let’s find the clarity in your numbers, increase your wealth and get more money in your pockets.

In today’s episode, I’m speaking about strategy hopping, so let’s dive in. Over the last year, I worked with a client who was addicted to strategy-hopping. They decided a strategy for their business. They decided times of launches, what they were going to promote when, what they would be selling. And then two months later, it completely changed. Okay, that’s not so much of an issue. Businesses pivot for very good reasons. So, we worked out a new financial plan. All good. But two months after that, it completely changed again. A completely different strategy again. And it went on and on like this. The result, not hitting anywhere near close to the revenue that they wanted to hit for the year.

And worse than that, since their people plan was not in support of their strategy, since that changed all the time, and their marketing plan couldn’t align with anything either, it meant they were spending way too much money in their business and their business was haemorrhaging cash. Because there was no clear strategy that was executed. Nothing to pin the direction of the business on, nothing for the team to focus on. No clear leadership at all from the business owner. As we speak, this business is failing fast because of the flip-flop strategy that is still happening. They still cannot have a clear direction and stick to it when it comes to their business’ strategy. Like I said, it is not a problem to change strategy if one of the things you’re employing is not working. If your current strategy is not aligned to your vision then 100% you should be changing that strategy.

If your business model is not working for you then it needs to be changed. If your people plan is not working for you then it should be changed. The issue comes to when you don’t just decide on a strategy and stick to it but you’re changing it every few months. And the business I was describing was not a startup either. They are a seven-figure business. This is not an issue related to newbies. This happens often with seasoned entrepreneurs. So, don’t think that you are immune to this if you are a seven or eight-figure business owner. I see strategy-hopping all the time happening at that level too. And it’s bringing businesses to their knees and it is such a terrible, terrible shame.

The thing that is lacking with strategy-hopping is follow-through, sticking to a plan you put in place and delivering on that plan. The strategy needs to be clearly communicated to your team. And then the matrix put in place so that implementation of that strategy happens, both by your team and by yourself. A clear strategy and follow-through is something I am incredibly passionate about. Because without it, our business is like a rudderless ship. And we cannot have a business in service of our vision or that fully supports us and our families if we do not have a clear strategy that everyone is aligned on and everyone is heading towards. Having no strategy is ultimately the road to failure. Please, please don’t let that be you. Get really clear and follow through. I hope that this episode has been useful for understanding a bit more about why you want to avoid strategy-hopping.

I also want to invite you to step into the Uncover Wealth community. This is my private community on Facebook. You can search Uncover Wealth Community in the Facebook search bar or go to annetteandco.co.uk/fbgroup. I do a live teaching there every single Tuesday for Training Tuesday and I would love to have you in there. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, let’s find the clarity in your numbers, increase your wealth, and get more money in your pockets.

In today’s episode, I’m speaking about sales activities versus goals. This episode is the audio from a Facebook live that I previously did, but the content is incredibly useful, so I wanted to share it with you here in the podcast. So, let’s dive in.

Typically, what I see that they have a cashflow issue, and sometimes it can be a cashflow issue, but often, it is an issue of not enough sales. It’s not that there’s a problem with cashflow as such. It is that the sales are not high enough, and they don’t actually support the level of expenditure. So, there’s a piece that needs to be done in making sure the expenditure is appropriate for your current level of sales, but there also is a big discussion that needs to happen around sales activities, and are you actually setting aside time for sales activities in your business? Those things that actually generate you those consults, or those discovery calls, or whatever you call them, whatever those things are that get people into your business. So, are you doing the activity that actually drives those sales conversations? And are you being really consistent with that activity? And are you monitoring that activity? And are you recording the results of that activity? This can usually be a huge, huge piece, so I want to speak about it today.

Here are my big things about your sales activity. First off, it’s identifying those things in your business that you can personally do that are going to drive sales conversations, that are going to help generate sales conversations, not waiting until those sales conversations fall in your lap through inquiries, through referrals, whatever that might be, but what conscious action can you take on a daily basis to move people through and to get those sales consultations on your books, in your diary, in your calendar? What can be done? Is that engaging in more two-way conversation in Facebook groups? Is that DM strategies on LinkedIn? What do those actual activities look like in your business that are actually going to help get people on a sales call with you, on a consult with you, in order to move them forward, in order to ideally bring them on-board as a customer or client? Because when we’re starting out or when we have a five-figure business, we can feel scared about these types of direct sales activities.

We can feel like we are being salesy, the stereotypical view of a salesperson being in a kind of shotty brown suit on a car forecourt. That is not what selling is. Selling is providing your solution to people who are looking for it. There is nothing pushy about it at all. Selling is a conversation, whether that’s done online or offline, and in this online world, of course, the sales conversation begins online. So, it’s making sure that you are in the right place to be starting those conversations and then usually pulling them offline into a call. What are you doing each day to get people into calls? What activities are you doing? Are you showcasing your expertise by answering questions in, say, other people’s Facebook groups when your area of expertise shows up? Are you producing content that converts, content that is going to be getting people into further conversations with you? Are you being consistent in the activity that you are doing in your business?

Once you can identify those activities that start driving sales calls, that start driving people to book into your calendar, to start booking those sales calls as time to speak with you, fitting calls, discovery calls, consults, whatever you call them. Once you can identify that activity that is driving that, you then need to be making sure that you are consistent with that activity, that you are monitoring that activity. You may find that for every 100 people you connect with on LinkedIn and send a direct message to, then you end up with 10 consultations on your books.

So, what do you have to do? You have to make sure that you’re doing as many of those activities every day as you can, or as someone in your team can do, in order to get the results you want. So, what does that look like? What is, for example, the number of people that you need to connect with, versus the number of calls that you then get and your conversion rate off that call? If you want to grow your business by four new clients a month, what are the steps you need to take? What are the sales steps you need to take now and consistently on a daily or weekly basis that orders deliver those results? What are those preemptive sales activities that are going to give you the results? This is incredibly important. Rather than waiting for those sales to fall in your lap, what are you doing every day, every week, and are you tracking it? 

I think a big, big piece to do is to actually set yourself up with a spreadsheet or even a notebook. You can say, “Okay, have I hit those activities today that I need to be doing in order to generate the sales that I want?” What is the data? What does that look like? And, each day, what is the sales amount that’s dropping into my bank account? What is the cash that is landing with me every single day, and then of course, expressing extreme gratitude to the universe for those sales coming in, for that amount coming in. That is a big piece, too, of course, but making sure that you are hyper-aware of what is leading to sales? What is generating sales in your business? Because this is the way that you focus on revenue, and this is the way you increase your revenue. It’s by being really aware of that whole piece, all those steps that you have to put in place to get the revenue, to focus on the revenue, and to make sure that you are doing the activities that are driving sales in your business. That is the way, fundamentally, that we grow our business. 

Any questions? Let me know in the comments. I would love to hear from you. I would love to know what your sales activities are in your business that are helping drive those sales for you. What are those proactive steps you are taking? It might be that, once a week, you are contacting your current clients and asking for referrals. That may be your sales activity. What does it look like for you? What is your activity that you are proactively setting aside time every day and every week to do that is driving sales? If you don’t know, then it’s about testing and tracking to identify the sales activities in your business now, so that as you grow and scale, you can try and test more different strategies adding on, adding on each time, not taking away, adding on, adding on, adding on, so that you can build and scale in a sustainable way.

I hope that this episode has given you some things to think about around your goals and your activity. I also want to invite you to step into the Uncover Wealth Community. This is my private community on Facebook. You can search Uncover Wealth Community in the Facebook search bar, or go to annetteandco.co.uk/fbgroup. I do a live teach in there every single Tuesday for Training Tuesday, and I would love to have you there. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, let’s find the clarity in your numbers, increase your wealth, and get more money in your pockets.

In today’s episode, I am answering a question that someone asked me on Facebook, so let’s dive in. Here is the question, for two weeks I’ve been ill and I’m pretty sure it’s related to taking on too much. I’m running my business and looking after my 16 month old who is in nursery part time. So I’m listening to my body and it is telling me to stop. I realised that I need to outsource parts of my business. The problem is that I am not yet profitable, so how do I start outsourcing when I have not made a profit? And how do you figure out what to outsource and to who? I just don’t know how else I’ll get to my business’ goals. I am working my ass off at the moment.

And here is my answer to their question. First of all, before you even think about outsourcing to grow, you need to figure out how you can make your business profitable from today. What that means is that you need to identify the money leaks that are currently happening in your business because you cannot continue to operate business not making a profit. That is a hobby. A hobby is something that costs money and a business is something that makes you money, I.E., makes you profit. Check out my podcast episode on how to identify money leaks in your business. It is episode number six and you can do the exercise in that episode once you’ve listened to this one to find out more about eliminating money leaks in your business.

The second thing that you should do after you’ve done that money leaks exercise is to work out of course what you want to outsource. What tasks can you handover? To do this, I recommend initially keeping a time diary. So how I do this is for an entire week, write down every single thing that you are doing in your business every minute of every day, every single tiny little thing. If you are posting on Instagram while you’re on the toilet, write it down and how long it took. I mean the post of course, not how long you were in the bathroom for.

And at the end of the week go through the list. All the things that someone else could do, then mark beside those. And of course you’ll see how long it took you to do those things. Now any of those things marked are actually things that you could outsource. You can have a look and see what might be the simplest and easiest, what is the lowest hanging fruit, but the thing is that you also want to make sure that anything you are outsourcing, you can make sure that the person you’re outsourcing them to is able to pay for themselves. You don’t just want them to be a cost, you don’t just want to be chucking random bits of admin to them and not really getting any value for that. So you need to make sure that the things that you’re outsourcing are able to give you a return on your investment.

I hope that this episode has been useful to you. I also want to invite you to step into the Uncover Wealth Community. This is my private community on Facebook. You can search Uncover Wealth Community or go to annetteandco.co.uk/fbgroup. I do a live teaching there every single Tuesday for Training Tuesday, and I would love to have you there. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, let’s find the clarity in your numbers, increase your wealth and get more money in your pockets.