the bossbabe podcast - 286. Work Less, Make More with Natalie Ellis

Starting point is 00:00:00 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 Babe podcast, 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 your host, Natalie Ellis. And in this episode, I want to talk to you about freedom, specifically freedom of your calendar, not being tied to your calendar day in, day out, you know, constantly in meetings, constantly just being pulled in a million directions and ultimately leading to burnout. It's really important that we talk about this. So I've shared with you very transparently about coming back to work after my maternity leave and

Starting point is 00:01:10 realizing I don't want to run the business the way I've been running the business. I want to make a lot of changes. And a big change that I wanted to make was elevating my role so that I could be in a more creative role. And so I learned that I'm not so needed for the day-to-day because over the past few years, I've put a lot of processes into place. I've put a lot of playbooks into place that a lot of the things I was doing was very easy to take them off my plate and have other people continue those things on. But there's one key mistake that I have made over the past few years. And I'm really realizing that as of late. So I was reading a book called Buy Back Your Time, which was a really, really great book. And it pointed this out for me and realizing it has

Starting point is 00:02:00 changed absolutely everything. And I wish someone would have told me this in the beginning of my journey. So I'm going to share it with you now, because if you are the kind of entrepreneur that is looking for more freedom in your life and not to be tied to your calendar and not be the bottleneck for absolutely everything, not be approving, creating, doing all the things, it's going to change the game for you. So when I first started my business, I didn't have a lot of experience in being in a business. I've never had a lot of bosses in my life. I've very much been an entrepreneur. And so a lot of what I've learned has been learning on the go, learning through podcasts, books, coaches, mentors. And it was my belief that when hiring, I would hire based on rules.

Starting point is 00:02:46 So I would hire a marketing person to handle marketing, an operations person to handle operations. I would hire maybe a chief of staff to manage team or, you know, support me in my role. I just kind of thought about it in terms of rules. I thought about hiring in terms of roles. I thought about hiring in terms of job roles. And what I would notice, and I don't know if anyone else can relate to this, is I got to a point where I had a pretty significantly sized team and I had a lot of people in a lot of roles, yet I felt like I was the only Swiss army knife. I felt like I was doing so many different kinds of things. I was contact switching.

Starting point is 00:03:27 I was really just able to execute on a lot of different types of things. And I would try and delegate it out and it would be, oh, that's not really in my job role. I'm wondering who I can pass that to. Or someone would come to me and say, hey, this is something that I'm needing done. Who can I pass it to? And what I realized is, wait, I am wearing multiple hats. Why is my team not wearing multiple hats? And to be completely transparent with you, a couple of years ago, I hired someone. They initially came in in a chief of staff role and kind of pivoted into like a director of marketing role. So just a couple of different roles in the company. And I hired them. I've kind of talked about this before, but they were hired at a time when I would say me and Danielle were probably at our peak burnout stage. We were exhausted. We just needed someone to come in and be that

Starting point is 00:04:22 unicorn that was going to save us from everything, right? Which was a terrible way to look at making a hire in the first place. Anyway, we brought this person in and they were really strong personality and they had a lot of opinions about the way in which we should do things. And rather than us kind of having those conversations and, you know, deciding, no, this is our business and we're going to run it the way we want to run it and how our gut tells us to run it. We were so exhausted. We just kind of went along with things. And Danielle's talked about this too. We just went along with it. And one of the things that came from that person leading teams was they

Starting point is 00:05:00 said that people should have very defined job roles and they shouldn't really go beyond their job scope, right? Which even at the time, it seemed to me like, wait, we're a startup. We are needing Swiss Army Knives. There's a lot of things that need to be done. And if it's not done by the team, it's going to fall on us. So we do need Swiss Army Knives in this kind of business. And what would happen was things would continue to fall on us. So we do need Swiss Army Knives in this kind of business. And what would happen was things would continue to fall on me and Danielle. And it would be like people's workloads weren't even that busy. People were not fully working at capacity, but there wasn't enough things to fit into that specific job role. And a big realization I've had is you want to hire to delegate and get things off of your plate,

Starting point is 00:05:49 not for rules. Let me say that again. You really want to be hiring to delegate and take things off of your plate, not to fill a job role. Because how many times might you create a job role, like a head of marketing and you're like, this looks great. When you really take a look at it, are you taking anything off of your plate or are you just adding more things into the business that are going to get done and you hope it's going to lead to more success? And ultimately it doesn't lead to more success.

Starting point is 00:06:21 It hasn't led to more revenue. It hasn't led to more sales. It hasn't led to simplicity. It's actually led to complexity without the business growth, right? I'm sure you're nodding along. And so the more people you've put in place in your company, you've started to make the business a lot more complex than it needs to be because people need things to do. It's in their job role. And it's not the employee's fault because they're really just following what's in the job role. So what I've realized is really important as entrepreneurs

Starting point is 00:06:51 is that we hire to delegate. And this might mean that you need to go out and hire a couple of people. It might mean you need to shift things around on your team and start to actually delegate things out to your team a lot more. You need to widen some job scopes, whatever it is, but you really want to hire to take things off of your plate. And so what I

Starting point is 00:07:10 recommend is really making a long list of all the things you are doing and all the things you're spending your time on and copy those things into another document. And that is your job description. That is the stuff that you want to be hiring for. That's the stuff you want to be delegating out to your team because just bringing in job roles and filling job roles is just going to mean that your company gets busier and more complex and it doesn't necessarily mean it's growing. So that's really what you get to focus on if you want to take stuff off your plate. And I also want to share, you know, as entrepreneurs, there's a couple of reasons that we want to take things off of our plate and free up our time. One reason is you might just want that freedom.

Starting point is 00:07:55 You might just want a free calendar, an empty calendar to go and do things that make you feel really fulfilled and lit up. Whether that is hobbies, whether that's relaxing, whether that's learning, growing, spending time with your babies, your loved ones, whatever it is and that's absolutely fine. Another reason that entrepreneurs will want to take things off their plate is so they can actually grow the 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,

Starting point is 00:08:40 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.

Starting point is 00:09:23 You might want to be taking things off your plate so you can actually grow the business. Because what will happen as your business starts to grow, if you don't take things off your plate, you're going to notice that your growth completely stagnates. You're going to notice that you are hiring, you're doing more things, you're not earning more. And it's because you are not freed up enough as the leader, as the CEO, as the entrepreneur to actually be able to grow the business. Once you've got space, that's where your creative ideas are going to start flowing in. That's where you're going to find that you get some really big ideas that are going to bring in big revenue for

Starting point is 00:10:03 us. You're going to get some really great momentum. You're going to be able to think and see in a completely different way to when you're working in the business and you're in meetings and you're contact switching and you're busy and you're burned out. You're going to be operating from a completely different place. A lot of people might think that people are just delegating out to sit in that complacency, right? Okay, I've got nothing on my plate now. Now what? That's really not necessarily the goal. Like if that is the goal, no judgment, that's fine. But that's not really the goal. The goal is you want to be freed up so that you can do the things that are going to move the needle in the

Starting point is 00:10:39 business. And you might have created this business because you don't want to work full time. You might have created it because you do. It doesn't really matter. But if you're not freed up to be creative like you were in the first place, like you were when you got your business off the ground, you're going to notice you are stuck on a hamster wheel. And it's not necessarily another hire. It's not necessarily, you know, another product that's going to get you to that milestone. It's actually taking things off of your plate and making sure that you are focusing on business growth, the real creativity, the ideas that are going to support you in business growth. That is going to be what gets you from where you

Starting point is 00:11:17 are now to where you want to be. And so I want you to have a think after this episode, where could you be delegating more? If you already have a team in place, are you also guilty of keeping their job roles very defined and taking on everything else yourself, you being the Swiss army knife? Or are you a solo entrepreneur that's finally ready to bring on an assistant and delegate things out? Because you know if you pay X amount per hour, you're actually going to generate so much more money per hour because you get to focus on the needle movers the things that really support the business growth and so I'm sharing this because hopefully it's going to have you think differently and I really wish someone would

Starting point is 00:11:59 have shared this with me in the beginning I really wish that I hadn't, you know, made so many mistakes of hiring people that were in such defined roles. And to be honest, promising them they'd be in that when they joined and realizing that actually that employee is not making my life any easier. In fact, I would say my life's harder because I'm still doing what I was doing in the first place. And I'm now responsible for managing an entire team. I'm sure a lot of you are nodding along to that right now. Okay, where you've brought on people and your job role has stayed exactly the same, that what's on your plate has stayed exactly the same. But now you're adding team management onto that, which is no small feat, especially when done well.

Starting point is 00:12:43 So hopefully this is supporting you. And I want to keep sharing a lot more like this. And if you are in this place and maybe you're even in a place where you're like, you know what, Natalie, this all sounds great, but I am so exhausted and burned out and busy that I can't even think about delegating because it's going to take me longer to delegate than it is just to do it myself. If that is you, you're really going to want to tune into the podcast, especially over the month of May, because we are bringing so much to you in the realm of processes and systems and operating procedures. We are going to really help you to streamline your life and actually get your life back, actually show you

Starting point is 00:13:25 what it looks like to focus in a place that helps you make more money and work less. It is so possible. I'm so proud of what I've been able to do with the company, especially in the last couple of months. It's been a game changer and more to come on that. But also my personal life. You know, I just yesterday afternoon, I took the afternoon off just on a whim to go to the little baby museum with Noemi. And that was on a Monday. And that felt incredible for me to be able to do that. You know, a few months ago, that wouldn't have been possible because my calendar was stacked. Whereas now I really get to lean into creativity. I'm spending a couple of hours every single morning

Starting point is 00:14:05 reading and writing and creating and I'm taking those ideas to my team and I'm infusing that energy into my team and we are growing. We are doing some really cool exciting stuff and I'm actually enjoying what I'm doing. So I'm sharing all this to let you know that it is possible. You get to have a really full life and a really successful business. You get to create success on your own terms. You get to have, if you want, a seven-figure business and only work 20 hours a week. You get to grow 20% month-on-month if that's your desire and cut your hours back 20% month-on-month. You really get to do this in a way that feels good to you. And that's really what I want to be bringing, especially over the month of May is

Starting point is 00:14:49 how I can support you in doing that and sharing with you the real needle moving things that are going to help you get there. So hopefully you love this episode. Please share and tag me at I am Natalie if you do or DM me and let me know if this resonated with you. Leave a review because it really supports and I will see you next time. 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.

Starting point is 00:15:30 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.

the bossbabe podcast - 286. Work Less, Make More with Natalie Ellis

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