the bossbabe podcast - 303. 3 Phases of Business + The Mindset and Strategy to Level Up with Ease

Episode Date: July 6, 2023

There are 3 phases of business that are universal to all entrepreneurs and each one has its own unique set of skills that are required to scale up into the next level. Natalie is breaking down each of the 3 phases so you know exactly which one you’re currently in + the #1 thing you need to focus on during that phase to grow faster + with more ease. She’s sharing the tactical and micro things that will help you up-level gracefully, release the upper limits you’re bumping up against + avoid the common pitfalls most entrepreneurs experience along the way. HIGHLIGHTS What many entrepreneurs waste their time doing + how to get the results you want FASTER How to have confidence + clarity on what your true needle movers are Where you are likely self-sabotaging + how to gain momentum to scale up How to break through the upper limits that have been holding you back  The strategies + mindset hacks to implement in each of the 3 phases + why they are so critical to your success LINKS Join Growth Day - GrowthDay.com/bossbabe  FOLLOW bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie

Welcome back to the Boss Babe podcast. I'm Natalie and I am coming in from Paris. I made it. We made it. We're in Paris. I cannot even believe this. This just feels like the biggest pinch me ever to be in Paris with Steven and Noemi. And we have family visiting and we have this beautiful apartment and we just have the best summer lined up. It feels like I have truly just turned my vision board into reality. Like I've just looked at it and it's poofed into real life. It's incredible. And I'm so excited. You know, this is what I think is one of the best things about being an entrepreneur is having this level of freedom. You know, the financial freedom is great.

Being able to have this incredible apartment in a beautiful location and be able to travel without even thinking about it. And the location flexibility, the schedule flexibility, all of that level of freedom is one of the biggest reasons I got into entrepreneurship in the first place. And to be here just feels so incredible. So keep an eye on my stories because I'm going to be sharing with you some of the processes and systems that I have in place that really helped me have this level of freedom so that I can say, hey, I'm leaving for two months and I'm going to, you know, go explore. And, you know, I'm not working as much as I have been and

really taking a step back, which is what my vibe is on summers. Like I've always been like this, maybe it's the European in me, but I just really like to soak up summer. Someone once said to me, you know, you only have 18 summers with your baby. And that blew my mind, made me very sad, but blew my mind and made me really realize how much I want to prioritize the summers all the time, of course, but summer, especially, you know, beautiful weather, getting to travel, just being together and that season that we all just get to have fun. So yeah, it just feels like an absolute dream come true. And a thing that we've just ruled out in the business

as well at Boss Babe is summer Fridays. So giving all of our team Fridays off as well because I knew I wanted Friday off. I knew I wanted to work less. And I think that, you know, I should be extending that to my team too because they work incredibly hard and I want them to have the same freedom. I want them to be able to experience the location and the schedule and

financial freedom too, because they're supporting and growing this business and supporting all of our clients. So that feels really, really amazing. I'm so happy that we're doing it. But with that, I want to dive into today's episode. It's so, so good. I'm going to be sharing with you the three phases you'll go through as an entrepreneur and what common things could hold you back in each of those phases. I actually don't hear a lot of people talking about this right now, but it's honestly so important and truly a game changer to getting to your next level with way more ease. I shared all about this in a recent talk I did on Growth Day, and I knew I needed to share share it with you too because it's going to support you so much to see what phase you're in and how to really handle reaching those upper limits as an entrepreneur at every phase you go through.

So let's dive in. To jump in and get a little bit tactical, I want to share a couple of things that I think are going to support you in that process of where you're going to. So this is going to work alongside everything that Mel shared, right? So following his process, you can really layer this in and build on. If you're thinking about starting your dream, you're probably in one of three places. You're in a place where you're not a 100% sure what your dream is, what you want to do, but you know you want to make a change. And so I call that the skill up space. You're in the skill up space where you've got a loose idea of something, a change you

want to create, a different way of feeling, but you're not 100% sure. And so maybe you've joined Growth Day because you want to learn more skills. You want to get more clarity. You want to be putting the work in, right? One thing I'll share is there is a temptation when you're in the skill up area to spend a lot more time than you actually need to, right? Spend a lot more time than you actually need to. And so if you're in the space of skill up and you can self-identify, I want you to do the absolute

bare minimum skilling up, right? So maybe the bare minimum is going and listening to Brandon's videos on clarity. So you can actually get an idea. If you're wanting to start a newsletter, for example, maybe the bare minimum is learning about what email software to use and how to actually do it. I want you to think about what the bare minimum is, because when you spend too much time in the skill up, you spend way too much time thinking about what you want to do versus going to where you want to go. All right. I love what Mel was sharing about. You can get your dream. It's on the other side of sacrifice. It's on the other side of action. And if we get too caught up in the skill up area,

we won't actually take the action. Okay. So self-identify if you're in skill up and make a commitment to yourself, you're going to do a bare minimum. So only time I'll tell you to do bare minimum is when you're in skill up. The second place that some of you might be in is the startup phase, right? So you're, you're in the actual madness mess of starting up. It's where the magic happens and the work begins, right? You're ready to put pen to paper. You're ready to actually do the thing, right? There's a real temptation here to make yourself so busy that you actually don't move the needle. And in six months down the line,

you haven't moved up this process. You haven't moved closer to this destination. In fact, you're just kind of scribbling a line step one like following yourself around in circles right 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. So when you're in the startup phase, when you're thinking about getting something off of the ground, I want you to just do the things that move the needle and let go of the rest. Just really think about what it is that's going to help you get there. Like Mel was sharing, you know, you've broken it down into a

ton of different steps. You've broken it down into a 90 day sprints. Don't start adding more things into those sprints. Don't start adding more goals, more to do's, more busyness, because you'll wake up feeling so busy and you'll be busy, but you won't be getting any results. Okay. The third phase that some of you might be in is in the scale up phase. So you actually have something off the ground. You may have already even achieved what you thought was your dream, but you might be in a place now where you're starting to rethink what that goalpost is. You know, we're playing that infinite game. You might be starting to think, okay, I hit this financial goal, or I hit this promotion, or I got my business off the ground

and got my first five clients. Now I really want to scale up this stream. And you're thinking about what that looks like. One thing I would say in this phase is it can be very tempting, and I'm speaking to you here, to want to burn everything down and start all over again because you've had shiny object syndrome. What I really want to encourage against is doing that, unless you have really good reason to burn everything down. I think as ambitious people and often creative people, because you are creative, we can get something working, get something going, get the promotion, get the thing. And we're like, well, I don't think this is fulfilling anymore. Maybe I'm going to start all over again because we want that. We love that startup kind of magic, right?

What I want to just hammer home here is if you are in the scale-up phase, think about how you can simplify to amplify your results and be willing to go the distance. Because what separates a lot of people who enter the scale-up phase and actually get to their next destination from the ones who get in there and kind of get on a hamster wheel going back to scale-up, start up, they scale up, and then they go back to the beginning again. The thing that separates the two people is their willingness to go the distance. Are you willing to continue going the distance on something that's actually working for you? Are you willing to go the distance on that destination that you thought you wanted? And so the reason I'm sharing this is when you're thinking about your process,

when you're thinking about your destination, I want you to look through the lens of whether you're in a phase of skilling up, starting up, and scaling up. If you're in the skill up, I want you to make a note. And you can just write something lightly or do this after the call. I want you to make a note of what are the bare minimum skills you need to learn. Commit that you're going to learn those, and then you're going to move on. You're going to move on to the next video. You're going to move on to actual action. You're going to move on to the sacrifice, the risk-taking, whatever it looks

like for you, you're going to move on. If you're in the startup place, love it. I love that you're in that energy of momentum and magic and action-taking because that's why you're going to see the biggest leaps. That's why you're going to see the biggest leaps. That's why you're going to see the biggest amount of progress, right? This is the zero to one. Make sure you don't make yourself too busy. And so when you are following Mel's process and you're thinking about your 90-day sprints,

I want you to think about the real needle movers and let go of all the busyness. Be willing to put blinders onto the different emails that might come in. And I'm not saying turning down opportunities, but what I'm saying is

one thing Brennan talks about is other people's priorities can often become yours if you don't know what yours are. Brennan talks about this a lot. And I want you to be very, very clear on your needle movers and your priorities

so that you actually get where you want to go. So we actually can make it into the next phase of scaling up. All right. So again, not saying you can't take on opportunities, but if you let everyone else's priorities become yours, you will stay stuck in the startup hamster wheel. And then third phase, if you are in scale up, when you're thinking about what you're going to do next, I really want you to think about what you could simplify right now in order to amplify your results. What you could take away in order to get even closer to where you want to be versus the idea of burning everything down in order to start again. And I see a lot of you nodding along. I see a lot of you in the comments.

Yep, this is me. This is me. I've been there. And the reason that I can speak to all three of these is because I've been there and I have many stories for when I sabotage myself in each single one. So I've shared with you, you know, process flexibility, destination flexibility, and thinking about where in which this process you're coming into it. So we think about where we want to go. And we think about, okay, am I coming in at this phase, this phase, this phase? At every single point in your journey, there's going to be one thing in particular that you're going to have to deal with. And I know that 100%, you are not immune from this thing.

Okay, at every single stage in this journey, it's going to happen to you and you are not immune from this. So I'm just going to let you know that right now. Who has, you know, let's, let's say you're in the startup phase. Who's had the experience of, okay, I'm going to launch my newsletter. I'm going to finally do the thing. And so you set up the software, you put together your templates, you get your designs going, you create a landing page where people can put their name and email to sign up. You've done the thing. And then you just sit on it and you actually don't share it. Or if you do, you kind

of half-heartedly share it. You just throw it out there. Sign up if you want. You put your email in if you want. Oh, no one's signing up. Okay, I guess I'm not meant to do this. Who can relate to that? I know I can. What this is, is you having one foot on the gas. That's creating the landing page. It's creating the email software, the templates. It's putting yourself out there. And then it's also having one foot on the brake. not really putting it out there, not really trying to get email signups and not really trying to hit that goal that you set for yourself, right? You've got one foot on the brake, one foot on the gas, and anyone that drives a car will know if you put a foot on the brake and a foot on the gas, you aren't going anywhere. You're

not going to be moving and it probably won't sound great either. And what we can often do in that situation is you'll put that email signup list out there and no one's signing up. And you're like, oh, no one wants the newsletter from me. Or I'm just not good at email marketing. I have no idea where to get signups from. Ugh, I'm just such a procrastinator, right? We tell ourselves all of these stories about ourselves. I must be lazy. So I'm seeing everyone else do it, but I must be lazy, right? None of that's true. If you've got your foot on the gas, it's actually nothing to do with being lazy or confused

or not capable. None of that, because you're also inside growth. You've got all the resources you need at your fingertips. You know it's none of those things. What's happening is you're hitting up against an upper limit. Now, this is something that happens to every single one of us at every single new stage of starting or scaling our dreams, our goals. You can read more about upper limits in

Gay Hendricks' book, The Big Leap. It's an incredible read. And he basically talks about, we each have a limit on how much abundance, success, and love that we think we are deserving of, right? We each have a limit on how much abundance, success, and love that we think we are deserving of. And once we cross this threshold that is, by the way, completely subconscious, you know, once we pass the threshold of what we deem as an appropriate level of success, an appropriate level of abundance, an appropriate level of love, we suddenly self-sabotage. Again, completely unconscious and not something that we're doing ourselves. We're not putting ourselves in the driver's seat. We have one foot. We think

we've got one foot on the gas and that's our conscious. Our conscious is on the gas and our subconscious is slamming the brake on. And we have no idea it's happening. And so because of that, we're telling ourselves stories, none of which are true. And so an example of this, and I'm curious if you want to put in the chat any time this maybe has happened to you, because trust me, it's happened to every single one of us and it's going to continue to happen to every single one of us, but you might have a launch for your business and it might go really, really well. And as soon as the launch is over, you fall really sick and you almost can barely deliver on what you promised in the launch because you feel so sick. Or you might get some great news and you might wake up really excited

with this great news. You're so, so excited. And then you get out of bed and you go into the kitchen and you're dancing around, you're making your coffee. And all of a sudden your partner's just breathing so loud. You look at him and you pick a fight with him or her, right? So you just have this great news. And then you see yourself picking a fight with your partner and you might not even consciously realize you're doing these things at the time. This is so normal, but it is called hitting up against your upper limit. And so what you're doing is unconsciously self-sabotaging yourself so that you're pulling yourself back to what your subconscious deems as a normal comfort zone, right? It's a normal comfort zone. And so there's a few ways that you

can think about taking the steps to get past your upper limits. Outro Music