the bossbabe podcast - 248. BBS: BTS Of Our Executive Team Retreat

Episode Date: September 9, 2022

Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes in bossbabe executive meetings? Today’s special episode of bossbabe business school invites you to sit at the table as Natalie details the strategic workflows and thought exercises the executive team at bossbabe works through in order to prioritize, monetize and optimize growth + revenue across the business. Get ready to get tactical with this high-elevation executive sneak peek! Highlights: How the bossbabe executive team uses the Boston Consulting Growth Share Matrix. Why you need to know your “north star” + how to find it.  The mistake most business owners make when scaling + how to avoid it.  Links: The Société - Join our private, online community of female entrepreneurs where you can connect, build and grow. Follow: bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Danielle Canty: @daniellecanty Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie

A boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Welcome to the Boss Bay podcast, a place where we share the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to balance it all. I'm Natalie Ellis and I'm your host for this Boss Bay Business School episode. So as you know, every Friday, we release a short solo

focused around business learnings that you can take away and implement in your own business. Now, today's, I wanted to actually bring you behind the scenes of our executive team off-site. So we did this last week. My executive team flew to LA. I was actually in Newport Beach, but I stayed and did it virtually and they all did it in person because if you have a newborn, you understand how difficult it is to get out the house by nine and also do that while being in two hours of traffic. So I decided, you know what, I'm going to do this virtually. And it worked so, so well. And just doing little things like that, making these kind of decisions has made coming back to work a lot easier, knowing that my work really gets to fit around my schedule and the baby has been really, really helpful. And normally in the past, no matter what I had going on, I'd push myself

to be there in person and just being on the same time zone was enough for me this time. So that's been really, really helpful. So a little motherhood entrepreneurship tip there is just really understand what your boundaries are. Know when you're just pushing yourself too far. And I knew I wouldn't be my best self if I really pushed myself to get up there, to leave at seven, to get there by nine and be there all day and come back. I didn't take breast milk on the trip with me. So I just knew I wouldn't be my best self. And I decided, you know what? You got to make this work for you. This is why you started your own business. And I'm so glad I did that because it meant that I showed up really present and was able to bring a lot to the conversation

versus being exhausted and worried about pumping and all that kind of stuff. So that's what we did. But anyway, what I wanted to do in this podcast episode was really bring you behind the scenes and show you what really goes on at a boss babe executive retreat and honestly if I'm being totally honest it's still a total pinch me moment that I even have an executive team like what how do I have an executive team I just started this business not knowing what I was going to do but no it obviously has to be very intentional but you know years in, I feel like this business is really a mature business. And with that means that we're starting to run the business through different frameworks and lenses and taking a look at where we're going.

And we're in a place where we have a lot of stability and we have a lot of support. And so going to the next level is really what our next kind of calling is. So one of the biggest breakthroughs from the offsite was from using the Boston Consulting Group's growth share matrix. Now, this probably sounds really complicated when I explain it, but I am going to break it down so that it's a lot more digestible. So basically, the growth share matrix is a portfolio management framework that helps companies decide how to prioritize their different businesses. It's a table split into four quadrants, one with its own unique symbol that represents a certain degree of profitability. So you have

question marks, stars, dogs, and cash cows. And basically by assigning each business to one of these four categories, executives can decide where to focus their resources and capital to generate the most value as well as where to cut their losses. Now, I actually learned all about this in business school and I know there's a lot of talk of like, I never took what I learned at university and was able to apply it to what I do now. But for me, it's really been the total opposite. So I did go to business school and a lot of the work I did was in entrepreneurship because I was always really interested in that. And I do feel like a lot of the things I learned, I've been able to bring into business. And I'm so happy that I went to university. I'm really not one of those that's totally against it.

And I'm also the same kind of person that never checks if someone went to university on their CV. Like to me, it really doesn't matter. I'm so glad I went because I enjoyed it and it was great for me. And when I'm looking at someone's CV to decide if I'm going to interview them, I couldn't get less what their education history is as long as they can do the job. Getting back to it. So although the growth share matrix can be used to help companies decide how to prioritize different businesses, it can also be used to decide how to prioritize different products within your business, right? So if you have a business with more than one product, then it does work. So what we did was we pulled up the growth share matrix and we were putting our products in different areas of the quadrant. Now, what's interesting about the way we do it is we class our channels as products too,

if they drive revenue, right? So our podcast, we class as a product because we drive revenue from this podcast it's actually a really profitable product for us and it's something that we spend time on and we put resources into therefore in my opinion it should be classed as a product because it takes time you know it takes resources and it generates revenue so let's class it as a product and we have multiple other ones you know some of them already on membership courses, things like that. And some of them you don't know yet because they are coming soon. But with the growth share matrix, there are four different quadrants. There is a cash cow quadrant. And that is basically you want to milk these cash cows, these cash cow products for cash to reinvest in your business, right? So if you have a product that is super high revenue and high profit margins,

you can milk this product as a cash cow and take that cash and reinvest it. Now, the place that you would probably reinvest it is in stars. So companies should invest in stars that have high future potential. So they have a potential to have really great growth and really good market share. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify

to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash boss babe. Now question marks are the kind of things where you don't want to

have too many of them. This is something that isn't a sure bet. So with a question mark, it's like, okay, I want to start this new thing. And let's say you want to start a podcast. I want to start a podcast and I don't know that it's going to be like super successful, but I do want to give it a shot. So it's not necessarily a star because, you know, yes, it has potential, but you don't really have any track record to say that it's going to be a success. So it's a question mark. So you're going to put time and resources into it and you'll give yourself X amount of time to create, produce and try and hit those metrics. And if it works, great, you'll move it into star. If podcasting is the kind of star you want in your business or you might get rid of it, right? So businesses will try certain things. They'll have these question marks and they'll put resources in, but at some point they call it, okay, this is a success or it's not a success.

And then pets slash dogs is basically something that you want to liquidate or reposition. It's, you know, low market share. It's got a really low growth. It might be taking your time and energy and you're not really seeing a return on it. And you're kind of like, why am I doing this? It's just something that I'm doing. And what we generally see is a lot of companies just focus on their cash cows. So maybe you have a course and it's really good at generating a ton of revenue for you, but you know that this course only has like a shelf life of two years, right? And just for example, we found that we know that with our social media programs, we need to be constantly recreating, recreating, recreating, adding new modules, changing things up because

that landscape is changing significantly. So let's just say you have a course and you know, it's got a limited shelf life, but it's making you a ton of money, but you know that's not what you want to be known for. It's not your brand. It's not the thing you really, really want to be known for. So you might not necessarily call it star, but it's a great cash cow. A lot of people forget about their star. So if we talk about it in terms of what's the North Star of your brand, what's the North Star of your business? What's your big vision, where are you going, right? Most people generally do know what their North Star is. However, they get so caught up milking the cash cow because it's bringing in revenue that they almost forget to focus on the North Star. They forget to focus on

where they're actually going. And this isn't a good thing necessarily. It is a good thing to help you get to a place where your business is stable and you're able to hire a team. You're able to really bring in people that can support you. And maybe then they can take hold of the cash cow and keep it running so that you can then step back and focus on your star. That's a great strategy, right? So if you're starting a business and it takes you a couple of years to be able to get up and running and you're just focused on the cash cow, great. But then you might want to step back and just re-examine, am I doing this right? Am I really moving towards my North Star? And if I'm not, when would be the right time to start doing it? And so for us, it was really important for us

to think about this because we're not venture backed. That means we didn't take on any investment money. And so all of our growth has been purely organic. And because of that, we have had a tendency to lean into cash cows so that we can continue to reinvest in creating a team. Like I said, I have an executive team and great people are very expensive. I really want to be able to hire amazing people and pay them well and retain them. That's really important to both me and Danielle. And with that, you know, we've spent a lot of time focusing on, okay, how can we bring cash into the business so we can fuel this growth and get the business to a place where we want it to be. Now we're thinking, okay, we're actually going to step away because the business is running really well, kind of without us. It's time to focus on those

stars. And what we're going to do is take money from the cash cows and reinvest that in the stars. Maybe that's reinvesting in marketing. It's reinvesting in team. It's reinvesting in you as a co-founder having that time and space because think about it, your time costs money. It's really important for us to focus on that right now. The reason that I wanted to share this matrix is maybe you're in a place where you know you've been focused on your cash cow and it's time to think about your North Star or maybe you've been so busy thinking about your North Star that you haven't been able to generate a cash cow for your business. So you're struggling to get your star anywhere off the ground and anywhere near

where you'd be happy because you haven't got the time or money to invest in it, right? So you could look at this in both ways. Either you have the star, but you don't have a cash cow, but you have the cash cow and you don't have a star. I just wanted to put this out there and see if it landed with some of you because I know a lot of you are building really incredible businesses and it's nice when someone can kind of just take you behind the scenes and say this was a breakthrough for me, this is what's working. So this is what we did at our executive retreat and it did form quite a lot of that conversation and it's helping us get to a place where we're really, really getting focused on where we are

going as a brand. And it feels really good. It feels really exciting. So yeah, I hope this was helpful. And by the way, if any of you are ever interested in doing VIP days with me and Danielle, what I will say is it's a five-figure investment. So it's for those of you who are at a place where that kind of investment does make sense for your business. But we will get with you for a full day in person, ideally, but we can do virtually and we can walk you through exercises and support you in scaling your business if that's something you're interested in. Just drop me a DM at IamNatalie and I'll take a look at your business and see whether I think it would be a fit. Otherwise, if you are looking to get our eyes on your business in many different ways, know that you can always join the

society. The society is a great place to pull from Boss Babe resources, plug into an amazing community and get on calls with me and Danielle to get certain questions answered. Or we have courses that you can dive into, which I'm sure you know all about. And if you don't, just head to bossbabe.com and you can check all of our I'm sure you know all about. And if you don't, just head to bosswave.com and you can check all of our offerings out there and see if something would be a fit. Let me know how we can support you and definitely tag me and share this episode if you felt like it was really helpful. Thank you so much for listening. And if you enjoyed this episode on the Boss Babe podcast,

then I'd absolutely love it if you leave us a review. As a thank you, we'll send you our Side Hustle Success Kit, your simple, no BS guide to keeping track of everything that you need to do to start and grow your business. To access this freebie, all you need to do is leave us a review, then share a screenshot of your review with contact at bossbabe.com and we'll send this must-have kit straight to your inbox. Thanks for watching!