the bossbabe podcast - 274. BBS: Grow Your Business From 6-7 Figures By Doing This

Episode Date: February 21, 2023

Have you scaled your business to 6 figures, but you don’t know how to reach the 7 figure mark? We get it. You have an audience, you’re making decent money and you love what you’re doing, but you're plateauing and approaching burnout. You feel stuck, right? On this week’s episode, Danielle breaks down four things you need to master to get unstuck and scale your business to 7 figures and beyond. And it’s not just about making more money… These four strategies will enable you to empower your team to perform at their best, so you can spend more time doing what you do best. It’s a win-win for everyone! If you’re trying to hit and surpass 7 figures without being a slave to your business, this episode tells you exactly how to do it. Highlights: The secret to prioritizing your work tasks and getting more done. How to increase employee engagement, motivation and satisfaction to drive better business outcomes. Learn the #1 thing that helped bossbabe grow our business in the last 5 years. Links: To apply to Danielle’s Mastermind, email her at [e-mail]   Follow: bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Danielle Canty: @daniellecanty

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. Hey everyone and welcome back to the Boss Babe podcast. This is a place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to balance it all. I'm Danielle Canty, co-founder of Boss Babe and your host for our Boss Babe Business School episode. Now I love doing these episodes and bringing you a lot of insights from my desk, things that I've learned over the last one year,

five years, ten years and today is a topic I'm really excited to dive into and I'm really passionate about because it's helping those of you who have businesses at the six figure mark or multiple six figure mark really scale them to seven figures and I know so many women entrepreneurs who have done the hard work of launching their businesses but it's often the case where you get to a point where you're feeling stuck like you're making money you have an audience and you love what you're doing, but you're kind of plateauing and you're starting to hit burnout. And the consistency of your income isn't quite there.

And you really, really want to break out of the six figure range and really start heading to that seven. But it's kind of taking double the effort, triple the time and just not easy. And so today I want to really break down the four things that you have to master if you want to get unstuck and up-level your business and take it from that six figures, that multiple six figures into that seven figure category, because it's a very, very different mentality. So the first thing I'm going to break this down into four things like I said the first thing that you absolutely

have to do which might sound a little bit counterintuitive maybe even a little scary but trust me is an absolute game changer for you and your business the first thing you need to do is start saying no so I know that as business owners, we often believe that to earn more, we must do more. And speaking from experience, I know that waking up and running a business every single day can feel like there's this endless list of to-dos and our actions are literally shaping our company every single day. But the truth is when it comes to leading your business, less is actually more. So Sheryl Sandberg has this amazing quote which I always remember and have in the forefront of my mind which is the most successful business leaders

are those who are able to prioritize their time and resources by saying no to the things that do not matter so I'm going to say it again the most successful business leaders are those who are able to prioritize their time and resources by saying no to the things that do not matter. And so this comes into what you're doing on a daily basis and what you're saying yes and what you're saying no to, but also lots of people in the early stages think, oh my goodness, I must add in this new product. I must add in this new offering. Whereas actually the less products and the less offerings you have often mean that you are actually end up being more successful so let's for example take a concept that I love called essentialism this is the one the author of essentialism the book's called essentialism 2 by Greg McKeown and it's based on the idea that we have limited time limited energy

and limited resources and that by focusing on what is truly important we can actually achieve more with less effort but this actually requires a deliberate and intentional focus on the things that truly matter and it also takes a ruthless elimination of anything that distracts us from our actual goals so by pursuing only what is truly essential we can then actually achieve greater clarity focus and success in our lives and our businesses but I mean you're like yeah okay Danielle I hear you I'm gonna do this whole ethos of essentialism but how do you actually determine what's absolutely essential versus what's a distraction disguising itself as something important right so quite often what we find is hang on a minute but everything important. And how do I know which isn't like is or isn't the most important thing?

So the first thing you have to do is get really clear on your business's values and your mission and ensure that everything you do is aligned with these. So if you discover that you're spending time on a project that isn't in line or moving you closer to your core mission, your core value, your core goal, then you must eliminate it. So if I have three core goals for my company, if I'm doing things on a daily basis that are not moving us towards that, I have to eliminate that. So it does mean that I do turn down a lot of speaking gigs. I do turn down a lot of one-to-one coaching because those are not in my priority list for moving forward. So next you've got to prioritize what you are doing and how to do that effectively. So I like using the 90% rule to evaluate all the tasks and responsibilities that I currently have. And I asked myself how they fit in with my mission or my goal.

And you can either do this and grade them nought to or you can grade them 0 to 10 sorry not 0 for the Americans listening 0 to 100 or 0 to 10 and then only pursue the things that rank above 90% or 9 so anything that falls below that 90 you should be delegating or eliminating so that you know you're actually prioritizing so focus on completing the most important tasks you've all heard of that eat the fog focus on doing the most important tasks even if they're daunting even if they're complicated because that is what sets you apart from being a six-figure entrepreneur to a seven-figure entrepreneur is realizing the things that you have to put the most energy into and the things that really are just like feel-good tasks or nice-to-haves or the cherry on top of the cake. So don't fall into the trap of checking off the easier to-do list things first and doing the less

important tasks first because you're convincing yourself that you've been busy. You have to actually eat the frog and do the hardest things first, because that's what makes you a better entrepreneur. And then finally simplify, identify inefficiencies, identify bottlenecks in your processes and your workflows and eliminate them. I actually did on the last behind, no, it's coming. Actually, it's coming. The next behind the scenes and boss Bay business school podcast I did with Sarah, who came in and taught notion inside the society and how to create systems within notion that actually save you time. She spoke about how she saved 87 hours by implementing this one thing. And so I think it's really important that obviously, if you're not already subscribed to the Boss Babe podcast, so you don't miss that, but you also understand how you can actually be

putting in processes and softwares that are going to save you from yourself in many ways. And then also create a culture and cultivate a culture of essentialism within your business. So even if you just have one employee or a VA or even in your home, encourage people around you to focus on the most important thing, to simplify their work and prioritize their time and efforts because ultimately it will help move that business forwards and take you closer to that seven figures. so let's say you've gone through that process and you're successfully focusing your time and resources on what really matters now by saying no but how do you get everything outstun well that leads us right into the second thing that you need

to master if you want to take that business from six figures to seven figures and that is number two delegation so delegation is absolutely huge if you want to grow your business we can't do everything by ourselves you are only as strong as your weakest player I always say that over and over again you're only as strong as your weakest player we can't do everything by ourselves we can't be everywhere at once and yeah sometimes we have to try but then we end up in burnout and I also always say you're only going to be as successful as you were mentally and physically capable of being and I can promise you that operating from a place of burnout is not the way to grow a million dollar business and a lot of people think that delegation means giving up control or abdicating responsibility

but the truth is that delegation is about empowering others to take on specific tasks and responsibilities and when done right delegation can actually increase control and foster a sense of shared ownership and accountability within your team whilst leaving you with more time to focus on high-level tasks and the early days of growing boss babe delegation was something i absolutely prioritized. And I have sat in every single seat in Boss Babe, and I've been able to remove myself from every single seat because I've been able to delegate those responsibilities into new people. I've been able to go in, set systems, set process up, and then hand them off to someone who builds on them and then actually ends up doing it better than even I did in the first place. And that's exactly what you need to be

able to harness and grow into as a CEO. Those are key skill sets that if you want to become a successful entrepreneur that is not a slave to its business, you have to learn how to delegate and how to give autonomy and shared ownership to those around you and within your business. 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. Yes. Yeah. One of the biggest biggest things i see all the time is a business owner who doesn't know how to delegate who doesn't give clear instructions on their team

and that gets really frustrating it gets frustrating for the person who's being managed and them who's trying to delegate so i want to share with you some really great ways to create positive delegation feedback loops that you can actually increase employee engagement, motivation and satisfaction and ultimately drive better business outcomes that help you grow your revenue. So the first thing you need to do is to set really clear goals, expectations and deadlines. Clearly define what success looks like and communicate this to your person or your team. Make sure it's specific specific make sure it's concrete and for example rather than just setting a vague goal for your employee to let's say master i know microsoft excel right set a more specific goal like create a budget template in microsoft excel that includes

automatic formulas that total spending they should know exactly what deliverables they're turning in and by what date so if you you're not already using things like Asano and let's say Notion to manage your employees, you absolutely need to be doing that. The second is choose the right person for the task based on their skills and their abilities. You don't want to ask your most creative team member to build a spreadsheet template, all right? It's never going to work well. You need to be noticing the characteristics your job is not to change any of your employees your job is to create an environment where your employees get to thrive in the things that they are good at so one of the biggest learnings we had at boss babe

was like our social team are not going to be the best ones to report on the social media data like finding someone who's analytical and who is creative is like near one impossible. Like you find them, they're needles in haystacks, but you need to create systems in your team that help each person thrive. So I'll have actually someone different in my team analyze some of the data that comes through on social so that we can lean into that more. We can lean into algorithms, We can lean into what's trending. And then my creatives are left to be creative. So don't try and change people. Your job is to work out how you can make sure each athlete is, if they're good at long jump, keep them in long jump. If they're good at sprints, keep them in sprints. If they're good at marathons, keep them in the marathon. Like that is your job. Next thing is empowering, empower the delegate to

take ownership and make decisions. So remember micromanaging is not the same thing is empowering empower the delegate to take ownership and make decisions so remember micromanaging is not the same thing as delegating so the way to build a sustainable business that can grow to seven figures is to provide your team with feedback and support when they need it and let them do the rest so you should be able to delegate something and then really only do one or two rounds of feedback. I always, I spoke about this a little while on a podcast and I did a tweet thread on it that really a lot of us are looking for things to be perfect, but the difference between 80% done and perfect, that 20% in the middle is really personal preference. It isn't actually probably going

to make the job be done any better or any worse. You have to let go that they'll have their own way of doing things, but the results should be as close as possible to the same as yours would. But you should not absolutely not micromanage because as soon as you get into micromanagement, you're actually just doing the job for them. You're disempowering them. They'll start disengaging and they won't learn. So another thing that I always do is I record looms and feedback. I'll do one or two rounds maximum of feedback with any of my employees if I'm having to give you more rounds of feedback than that either I need to be sending you off to learn something or perhaps you're in the wrong seat so really understand how to give feedback is going to be

really important for you to like take that next step up and then lastly celebrate success with them regularly celebrate your team never ever ever take praise for something that you did not do always pass it down to your team members who did it let them celebrate that success both big and small but reinforce it that positive behavior fosters a culture of growth and professional development and let me tell you now your employees are going to be so much more productive, the happier that they are. So really feed into that as well. So in summary here, to help delegate, you want consistent communication, feedback, and recognition of good performance. These will all help build trust and motivate your team and ultimately lead to a team more efficient and you all having higher earnings all right so we've got saying no

got delegating like a pro and you've got to be motivated to empower your team and you've got to fit your team to have responsibility to feel like they are going to go from six figures to seven figures alongside you and then the other third thing that I would say is probably will be in one of my biggest learnings between six and seven figures and on to eight is the fact that you have to learn a mindset like you have to have a learner mindset it's one of my favorite strategies for continuing to improve my business the learner mindset is positive it's growth oriented it's where individuals believe that our abilities and their intelligence can actually developed through effort and experience. People with a learner mindset really view mistakes and setbacks as opportunities for growth and learning rather than as proof of their limitations.

They are more likely to take on new challenges, seek out feedback and new information and be proactive in their own development. So what does this look like in business? Well, it really looks very simple. You can't let ego get in the way of you learning. You have to let people be better at things than you. And so what I see with a lot of CEOs who go from six figures to seven figures is they get threatened when people around them are actually better at than what they do. But really that's the goal of being a good CEO. My job is to have a better operations person than I am, to have a better content creator than I am, to have a better marketer working with me than I am, so that I can be the leader of all these

departments, but I'm not the best at running every single department. And so I really want you to feel empowered by having good people around you versus being threatened by having good people around you. And give that, you know, even if sometimes you're like, oh, I kind of contributed a lot to this thing, still give them that praise because they will continue to grow with you and fly alongside you, which is ultimately what your business needs to go to that next level. Your job is to leverage their expertise to amplify what you're about. So let me give you another example of this. So somewhere I see this being really effective is with your sales funnel. So on a tactical level, you must always be evaluating your sales funnel, right? And you have to know that if you put X amount in of traffic into that funnel, you get Y amount out of sales and when you are crystal clear on this you'll know exactly what metric to increase so that you can be effective at growing your business to seven figures so approaching your sales funnel with a learner mindset can look like

conducting market research optimizing the top of the funnel and compelling content so you can capture the attention of potential leads and improving the purchasing experience and the continuous analysis of these things and unlocking bottlenecks and conversion rates and all of these pieces right so first of all you're like willing to look at where the mistakes that you have made when you have a learner mindset the second thing around this is that you are happy for other people to point out those mistakes in maybe the work that you did first time around because got got you to six figures is not what is going to get you to seven figures and that is okay and be good with don't see what you did previously as a failure or anything wrong with it see it now as how you a base to which you get to refine upon okay Okay, so those are three things. My last thing, which I think is

probably the biggest thing to growing your business from six to seven figures, the number one thing I would say has helped our growth the most in the last five years is your network. Your social network is a powerful tool that can greatly influence your wealth and success. The people you surround yourself with can provide valuable resources, connections, and opportunities that can lead to personal and professional growth. Your strong relationships within your network will actually lead you to recommendations, introductions, and collaborations that will help you advance your career and your business. Do not underestimate the power of being able to text somebody and say, hey, do you have a connection to this? Do you have a connection to that? And if you are not investing

in your network already, you are making a fundamental error that will hold you back in your business. Because when you get in the right right rooms you not only get access to knowledge you did not have before you get access to better and better experts the tax experts the marketing experts the you name it experts that you start to access as you climb your social ladder and your business grows gets better and better so if you were if you started out and you have not invested so let's say you started your social ladder and your business grows, gets better and better. So if you were, if you started out and you have not invested, so let's say you started your business at zero, and then you got to six figures, and now you're at multiple six figures. If you have not invested in new networks, new masterminds, you are making an absolute fatal error in the growth of your company. Because moreover, your network will support you, give you advice and encouragement during the good times, but also the challenging times.

And by expanding your network and maintaining positive relationships, you can actually increase your chances of success and wealth. And also, I do want to point out this point. The quality of your relationships is more important than the quantity though okay so it's really crucial as I say this you build meaningful connections with people who share your values and have a positive impact in your life and they want to go where you are also going you want to be swimming with the current not against it so this was one of the biggest learnings I had and one of the reasons I moved to LA when I was in the UK I was not surrounded by entrepreneurs who were growing at the scale that I was that was a big decision about me moving to America and then moving to LA now I'm not saying everyone has to move to

LA to grow their businesses but what I am saying is you should be investing in in-person masterminds you should be investing in growth you should be investing in communities that support you whether they are and end up doing business with you because that's what happens as well you end up doing business with each other or they'll give you recommendations of people that help you grow your business i can tell you now the last four contractors and agencies are hired came from recommendations of people within my network. So if you have not already invested and you are looking for a mastermind, a container, a community that's going to help you grow from six figures to seven figures, it's going to give you strategy.

It's going to give you connections. It's going to give you templates. It's going to create business for you. You are going to get 10x what you invest in this i want you to email contact at bossbabe.com right that's contact at bossbabe.com and tell them you want to make an inquiry into daniel's mastermind this is a invite only mastermind that i am running this year with two in-person events and a community and a call. I am actually going to get a strategy call with me as part of your onboarding. So I'm going to actually deep dive into your business, spend some time with you so we can set your goals

and the plan in motion to help you go from six figures to seven figures this year, okay? I have not done a mastermind in the last three years. I am so, so excited for this container. It's going to be absolutely epic, but it is invite only. So what you need to do is you have to be at six figures already or multiple six figures. You have to be wanting to scale to seven figures and you need to email content at bossbabe.com and say, Hey, can I have information on Daniel's mastermind? And then

we'll send you an email telling you a little bit about it. And then you actually have to apply. And then if you are successful successful you'll get an interview with me okay so it's very very exclusive we only have a few spots available but if any of this has spoken to you and you've listened to this being like oh yeah I definitely need to be working on these things that she mentioned I also really want to help with strategy I really want to help with my funnels then this is going to absolutely be an investment that you will reap the rewards on over this year so I hope you have enjoyed this training I'm going to be doing a few more every other week I'm releasing a behind the scenes Boss Bay Business School episode just giving you a little bit of

insight on my learnings things that I've been doing things that really are just more strategic about growing your business like I said the one in two weeks time is going to be on Notion and about how you can be leveraging systems to actually save you 87 hours in a year, at least, as a minimum. How good would that sound? Anyway, until next time, have an amazing time. And like I said, I'll put the email address in the show notes, email contact at bossbabe.com, and they will get you the information that you need. 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. Bye.