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Do Less. Impact More

Welcome back. For segment two we are gonna talk about doing less and impacting more. I want you to be able to do less work to put less energy into your business, less time into your business, and get more out of it. Get more money, get more confidence, get more reward, more reputation, for yourself, and I want you to be able to do less and serve your customers more, make a bigger difference in their lives. Give them more to chew on, solve more of their problems, help them achieve more of their desires. That's what this segment is all about. Before we get into that, let's have a quick physics lesson. Now, I will admit I never took physics in high school, I was way too into music at the time and it just didn't fit in my schedule. Otherwise, I'm a big science geek and I would have loved to do it. But this is simple physics, you can handle this. So what is leverage? First of all, a lever is one of the, I don't know how many there are, six? I want to say simple machines. I should have check...

ed on that before we got started. But a lever is a simple machine. It allows you to do work more easily. And it looks kind of like this. You got a weight on one end, and you want that weight to lift up. Then you've got a fulcrum, and the bar, the lever itself, that balances on the fulcrum with the heavy part on one side. Stick with me, now. Using the lever, you can push down, and with much less effort, oops, okay, sorry, your goals, effort, this is really dramatic here, people. You can raise the weight. So in your business, this looks like when you include leverage in your business, what this looks like is you putting less effort into your business, to be able to reach your goals much more easily. The other thing that happens here, is that you can assert less effort to help your customers reach their goals, as well. And a lot of times it takes less effort on their part, too. Less money, less time, less investment. So that's what's so great about leverage. Leverage is the key to business growth. And leverage can take all sorts of different forms. Sometimes with leverage our goal is to impact a lot of different people, sometimes our goal with leverage is to impact someone incredibly deeply. And so leverage can look like all sorts of different things. You know, in my business, leverage takes the form of community. It takes the form of I can produce a worksheet once and deliver it to many, many people. Or I can write an ebook once and deliver it to many, many people. If you're a coach, if you're any kind of information purveyor, information marketer, your business probably looks pretty similar to that. Yesterday we talked about jewelry as an example, or any maker business, as an example, it's much harder to get leverage there, but one way you can do that is through, you know, wholesale. It's not exactly leverage, but it takes a whole lot less effort to sell 100 pieces at wholesale than it does to sell 100 pieces at retail. So that falls into leverage in my book, as well. If you have any questions about how leverage looks in your business, let me know, we'll talk about it. But that's the basic idea. We want to assert less effort to be able to actually reach our goals, things that are big, things that are heavy, things that are tough to do. When we use leverage, we can do them in less time and with less energy. So what is leverage? I'm sorry, how do we, what do we leverage in our businesses? The goal of a solid business model, that thing that we were talking about earlier, is to leverage your passion, your talent, the skills that you've learned and the way you work best, to create offers that impact your customers more deeply and increase your revenue. All right, the goal of a solid business model is to leverage passion. So what gets you really excited? What keeps you up at night? What ideas fuel you? What inspires you? Are you leveraging that in your business right now? Are you using it to create offers that impact your customers more deeply and increase your revenue? What's your talent? What are you innately good at? What's that special something which we're gonna talk a lot more about in just a bit, but what's that special something that you've just always had? Are you using that to impact your customers more deeply and increase your revenue? Skills, what are the things you've learned, the programs that you've completed, the certifications that you've taken, the degree that you have. All that learning that you are constantly doing, are you leveraging those skills to impact your customers more deeply and increase your revenue? And then finally, the way you work best. Way too often we ignore the way we work best. We try and reproduce what other people have done. We try and follow other people's leads. Other people work differently than we do. Other people derive energy from other things. For instance, I'm an introvert. I know, it's crazy. I'm an introvert. I need a lot of down time, I need a lot of alone time. I need a lot of time in my own mind and my own head. If I don't set up my business model to leverage my introversion, I will be exhausted, I will be cranky, and I won't be able to help people the way I really want to be able to help people. So a lot of my day is spent in my own head thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking. Developing new systems, you know, outlining new worlds of business ideas. It's one of the reasons why I incorporate kind of this back and forth feedback into my big mastermind program. That let's me sit and think, instead of constantly being on the phone. If I was constantly on the phone, I would exhaust myself. I would not be a pleasant person to be around, and I wouldn't be helping people. But by feeding my desire to essentially sit around and think, I am able to impact my customers more deeply and increase my revenue, and still be a pleasant person to be around at the end of the day. So that's something to think about for yourself. What is it about the way you work? What is it about what turns you on, that could allow you to impact your customers more deeply and increase your revenue? So when I talk about leverage, I like to talk about your impact to effort ratio. Your impact to effort ratio. How much impact are you able to get out of how much effort? One way to grow your business, one way to increase your revenue, one way to make it easier on yourself, is to be constantly figuring out ways to whittle down the amount of effort required to make a bigger impact. An impact could be, as I said, impact for a wide variety of people, lots and lots and lots of people. You could have a massive audience, and you could be constantly trying to make that massive audience bigger so that you are scaling your impact. Or it could be a question of depth. Is it easier for you, does it require less effort for you, to take one client and really deeply impact them? So we can go for width, or we can go for depth. All right, so think about that. And maybe jot down that for yourself maybe in the margins of your workbook. Which is easier for you? Does it make more sense for you? Does your special way of working make more sense to go wider, or to go deeper? Because that dramatically affects your business model. If you're trying to go deeper, when really what you want to be doing is networking and creating relationships and getting on this blog and in that magazine and on that TV show, you're all out of whack. You won't be able to make money with it. I mean, you'll make some, but you're gonna be stuck. You're gonna be stuck in the micro-business earning plateau and it's not a fun place to be. Same thing if it's the opposite. If what you really love is working with one client over the course of the year and pulling them through deep transformation, or maybe it's you're an interior designer and you don't like just working on one room, you want to take someone's whole home and transform it, and maybe that's a six-month process for you. If that's what you really love, and the focus of your work, the focus of your effort, is constantly trying to get in the next magazine, trying to get on the TV show, trying to network, because you think that's what you have to do, you're not making time for the easy things. You're not making time for the work that could be making you more money and feel easier for you. All right, so you have to know. Am I trying to go wide, or am I trying to go deep. That will dramatically affect what you want to put out into the world and how your business model is going to work. Wide or deep? Susan. So, in terms of jewelry, would who I market to play into wide or deep? Because I feel like yeah, I could market to everybody and their mother and their daughter, or I can market to a specific type of person. Yes, in your case I think you've made the decision, right, to start micro-manufacturing, essentially, right. So that decision on its own, puts you more in the wider category. And yes, within that wider category, you want to think about who's the niche customer for this. But ultimately, volume is what you're looking for. You need to get your pieces on as many people as possible within that market that makes sense for you, to make the business work. Someone who is, say, and I think Tracey's business falls into this category, right. Someone who is commissioning an engagement ring and a wedding set and a men's wedding band, and then coming back for an anniversary gift a year later, that's more of a deep jewelry business model. Makes sense? Yeah. Yeah, so I think you've already made this decision. I hope it's the right one for you. Right, yeah. I'm sure that it is, because it sounds like you've thought about it a lot. So yeah, I would say you've already made the decision, you're wide. Okay. Okay? Are you wide or deep, Bridget? Definitely deep. Deep. I am wide currently. Okay. But I want to be deep. Good. And I just had my biggest aha moment right there, yeah, because I realized I'm killing myself in something that I don't want to be doing. So, yeah. That feels good, right? It does. I'm like ah. Yeah, and now, I mean yeah, that totally felt, will change everything for you. Yeah. That's huge, awesome. Wide or deep for you? I would say deep right now, but I would like it go become wider. So right now it's deep, and that would be like two years, and down the road then widen that out. Yeah, and I find that's really common with micro-businesses, too, because remember the upward thing, the easy wins tend to come when we're working individually with people, when we're working one-on-one. And that is inherently deeper work. And so a lot of times the micro-business will start doing deep work, but have that goal of going wide later on. And knowing that that's where you want to go, and knowing what your business model could look like, at that time, helps you make decisions now. Because you start transitioning, and you start making time for those things that will get you to where you want to be. Cool? Yeah. Robyn, wide or deep? I kind of feel like we do both in Flourish and Thrive, because we do have a mastermind group, so we go much deeper and focused on ten individuals and their businesses, they are jewelry businesses, and then we have a whole community, which is, you know, we want to touch as many people as we can that are jewelry designers. Yeah, and you're in year two of this business? Yes. Okay, fantastic. And you also have, you guys both have business experience before this, as well. We also have other businesses we do. Yeah. So one thing I want to point out here is that starting off, trying to go both wide and deep, is really difficult. My business also goes wide and goes deep, absolutely. Wider is easier for me. It's what I'm more attracted to. It's what, yeah, it's what's easier to me. I have developed offers that allow me to also go deep with exactly the right kind of people. And I have a feeling that's what you guys have done too, you very much lead with a wide kind of set-up, a wide strategy, and then you've worked people through this conversation to the point where you know they are the people you can easily help go deep, right? And so it's the same thing for me. Deep is hard for me, until it's exactly the right person, and then deep is easy. Deep is fun, cool. Shanna, wide or deep? Definitely deep, and desiring to go even deeper, because I'm looking to add even more, you know, kind of life coaching, targeting the mom after she's the mother, tackling the same stuff we go through for birth, but how do you deal with it now as a mother and how do you deal with it just now as the new identity of who you are, so even deeper. Cool. Sasha, wide or deep? Well, I definitely started out wide. Absolutely. Being a writer and having an impact on society, and then it seems like to make money now, it's much easier to go deep. And I like that, but I really just want that to support my writing. And so I'm a little, my natural inclination is to be like you, and be an introvert and come up with ideas that help people. Yeah, yeah. So I think one way for you to wrap your head around this particular idea, is that your books, although they are revenue streams for you, they're absolutely as much marketing and sales channels for you. They just happen to have price tags on them. I love putting price tags on marketing channels, by the way, that makes your life much easier, when you get paid to market. But so if you think of that as your marketing, so instead of sending out an email newsletter, don't stop sending out your email newsletters, but if instead of sending out your email newsletter, you publish a book, that's a marketing channel, that's how people are coming into you. But the real meat of what you have to offer is that deep work, that then goes back and feeds your marketing, which is another book, right? Because I mean, that's exactly what Wet is, Sasha mentioned that her next book is called Wet, in the pre-show yesterday, and it's a memoir. It's over what, five years, ten years? Yeah, about five years. So that, man that's deep, it just so happens that you're sending out that deepness to a wider net of people, to pull more people in to do deep work with you. That was really roundabout, but I think you got it. It's a cycle of deepness. And then Susan, we already determined you are wide. Not really. Not any wider than me. Confusion here to channel. Sure. Alison is just saying, can you just really re-define what is deep as opposed to what is wide? I think she understands the wide, but not the deep. So sure, wide is big audience, deep is... So wide audience probably lower-priced product, you're going for helping as many people as possible with what you're doing, maybe it's a really precise solution. Deep is when you take clients through, say, a process. Like a friend of mine, Natasha, from systemsrock.com takes her one-on-one clients through a system of systemizing their businesses. So you know, it's one, two, three steps. And that's a really deep process. And it comes at a high cost, which means she needs less people in her overall audience to be able to make that model work. Life coaches often, before they jump into the world of leverage or before they decide to go wide, because you can certainly change your mind, life coaches start going deep, first. You actually need a pretty small audience, maybe there's only 300 people on your list, and you can still make great money doing that. You just have to have the business model set up for the same thing. Same thing with interior design. Same thing with, yeah, commission art, commission jewelry, commission anything. That's a really deep market. You only need maybe 10 people per year, 20 people per year to say yes. I need 200 people per year, 500 people per year, to say yes, because that's how my model is set up. So I can tell Tara is at work there, because Marietta just asked very specifically about interior design. So well done. Interior design is on my mind. I think this is like the third time you've been psychic today, it's getting weird. Sparkling Yo girl says, but if you're a deeper one-on-one person, how do you use leverage, since that's usually do once sell many items? Yeah, so this is where I come up. I have a slightly different definition of leverage. My goal with leverage is, this is good, because it leads me to the next slide, is do less, impact more. So the goal with leverage is impact, not necessarily volume, or scale. So for you, your impact is that deep impact, it's taking people through a transformation, it's taking people through a system, it's taking people through a process. But for you, it requires a lot less energy. If you're the kind of person who goes deep with someone, those activities that let you go wide, doing PR, doing the networking, blogging like a crazy person, the things that I really like to do, aside from the networking of course, those kind of things take a lot of energy from you. They don't feel good. They don't feel like you're getting traction. Maybe you're just not getting traction. I want you to feel like that's okay to remove those kind of things from your business, or that you're going to approach them differently because your goals are different. Your goal for leverage in this case is to impact more deeply, instead of impact wide. Make sense? Cool. Speaking of impact, here's an opportunity to share, I want to know how you guys want to impact your customers. This is beyond wide or deep. I want to know what the impact is that you want to make in your customers' lives. So what impact do you want your business to have. Share with us on Twitter, I'm taralive. Share with us in the chatroom, share with us at taragentile, at creativeLIVE. What impact do you want your business to have. What change do you want to help your customers to make. What do you want to teach them? What do you want them to accomplish? Most importantly, how do you want them to feel? What impact do you want to have with your business? Let's take a couple of answers here before we go online. Shanna. I mean, ideally my calling is to help people find personal freedom by being present and questioning their stories, and tapping into what is possible. Birth just happened to be my starting point, but I'm going into stuff that really helps to carry that throughout the theme of their life. But I want them to just feel free and really tapped in and present, with whatever's happening in their life. I love it, awesome. Brianna. I'm writing my answer. (laughs) I want to help girls make positive life decisions that will make them feel strong and confident, and help them figure out what their path in life is, because they start out young. And I'm using soccer as a tool and vehicle to help guide them in that process, because sports can teach you a lot about life, and obstacles and overcoming challenges. So trying to tie that in with the bigger picture. Beautiful, love it. Robyn. I want jewelry designers to feel more knowledgeable and not feel in the dark, because starting out, there's just, I want them... I feel like Tracey and I have so much knowledge we want to provide for them, so they're not spinning their wheels and not getting anywhere, and finding out too late that they should have had some help in their business. And so we want to do that cost effectively. So I don't know how to all put that in like one little shiny word or sentence. You want to create a market full of jewelry designers that are flourishing and thriving in their businesses, right? Absolutely. Awesome. Thank you. Write that down. What impact does our online audience want to have? Did you have some there? Yeah, I do. Let's see, I'm gonna try to pronounce this, Yi Munya. I know it's a tricky one. Yeah. Says I want them to feel empowered and able to live the life they want. Awesome. Pag, I'm just gonna shorten this one, because this is long. Pag says, to positively empower individual's lives and the life they envision for themselves. Beautiful. And LoveCherie is saying, I want my business to create self-confidence, a comfort in being who they are and being proud to show it. Sweet, awesome, great, great answers. And all of those kind of answers always give me so much hope for the world. We're creating whole market places of people who want this kind of impact. Susan. I always have a hard time when, with jewelry, or a good or accessory or fashion, with that answer. Yeah, okay. Because it's not a need, it's a want. I always disagree with that. I believe very firmly that for what you do, for the right customers, it is absolutely a need. So here's a little game I want you to play. I want you to imagine you are your most ideal customer, maybe this is someone who already has a piece of your jewelry, maybe it's a friend of yours. Maybe it's somebody whose bought something or someone you had in mind when you were designing the pieces. I want you to imagine them putting on that necklace, or putting those earrings in. You know, they're getting dressed, they're in front of their dresser. And then they step over in front of the mirror to check themselves out. How do they feel in that moment? How do you think they feel in that moment? Confident, unique, um pretty. That's fine. I know that word is a little, can be a little scary for some people. Yeah, confident, unique, pretty. You want your business to have an impact in women's lives such that they look in the mirror and they feel like they look damn good, right? That they feel confident. That they feel unique. You want them to feel tapped into that special something that they have, that makes them unique. And you want them just to feel pretty. You want them to feel like I'm attractive, I'm somebody people want to look at, so that when I'm in the meeting, people are paying attention to me. When I'm on the street, people are paying attention to me. Hopefully not too much. But no, no, I think you get the idea. Don't under-estimate the importance of that impact. It is so true in every, single business. If you sell B to B it might not be quite so personal and you know feel good, it might be about, you know, you want to help other business owners create more profitable businesses. Or you want to help people write copy that helps them help other people. There's all sorts of ripple affects to impact, too. You know, that's really fun to consider. And B to B businesses, I think, business-to-business businesses, are really, I mean they have such an amazing ability to create these ripple affects. So yeah, don't under-estimate the importance of the impact your business is having, no matter what you sell.