Fun Business Fun Money Podcast
EP 039 – 3 elements of a strong business foundation (Back to Business Basics)
Most entrepreneurs imagine their business working like a well-oiled machine, never missing a beat.
When its NOT working so well the default diagnosis is sales and marketing related.
You just need to do more marketing, have more sales conversations, work harder and show up EVERYWHERE to expand your audience and bring in more clients!
When you look a little deeper its easy to see you don’t have a sales or marketing problem – you have a wobbly foundation. Something is missing in your process.
In this coaching episode we look at 3 key foundation areas that could be the surprising source of disconnect in your business.
KEY MENTIONS
TRANSCRIPT
Hey there, and welcome back to the Fun Business Fun Money Podcast!
Before we get started on today’s coaching episode I want to give a quick shout out to all the lovely entrepreneurs and small business owners that I’ve had a chat with on Zoom over the past few days.
If you’re on my email list – and actually READ my emails! – you’ll have seen a link to book a free 30min call with me to talk about your biggest business challenge right now.
These are not sales calls to pitch you my offer or a course or anything else, they’re just a fun thing I felt like doing. I love connecting with the real people in my audience, on my email list, the people I see on social media, and getting to know YOU better.
And if I can help in some small way, whether its an idea, a tip, tool or an action you can take that will make a difference for you right now, I’m down for it!
If you’re NOT yet on my email list you can rectify that immediately so you don’t miss out on things like this in the future – you’ll find the link to sign up for my FUNday emails in the description of this episode and in the show notes.
So thank you to each and every one of you who has booked the call, shown up with your beautiful energy and shared your challenges. I love the insights you’ve had and I can’t wait to see where it leads you!
And that kind of leads ME into today’s topic, which is another coaching episode in the ‘Back to Business Basics’ series.
This one is about diagnosing the disconnect in your business, where are your potholes and gaps that are tripping you up? Or worse, tripping up your clients or customers?
Today we’re connecting the dots between you and your potential clients in terms of what you actually do for them.
Being able to convey that in clear and simple terms starts way before you write a post for social media, or create a reel, or get into Canva to create an enticing freebie or graphic.
I love that term, diagnose the disconnect, its one that a couple of my mentors use a lot and it nicely sums up what I do with MY clients in IGNITE, my 1-1 coaching program.
We review your business from multiple angles. We look at your goals, offers, pricing, do you have the right niche and are you specialising (yes there is a difference!)
We look at the steps in you client journey – and I’m not talking about their journey through your marketing funnel to actually pay you for your expertise, I’m talking about their journey from THAT point to where they have the results they want. The actual work you do with your clients needs to be a smooth ride for everyone involved.
What else do we review? Your business structure, your business model, your financial situation, the gap between your current income and what you actually need to earn, and all the things.
Phew! Thats a lot right??
But those are the foundations your business needs to have in place BEFORE you go too far into any marketing strategies, or work on your content themes, or making reels, or booking yourself in as a podcast guest.
If you’re in business for the long game, and I really hope you are, a strong foundation is whats going to carry you forward without burning you out along the way.
We’re going to look at these in a bit more detail today and in the coming weeks, theres a lot that I’ve just outlined there, we need to break it down further.
Grab your pen and paper if you’re in a situation that supports you to do so, and take some notes along the way. Don’t worry if you’re driving or out for a walk, you can always check out the show notes in the description of this episode for a full written transcript.
There are 3 broad areas that I consider the foundations of any service-based business, and I’ve given them very technical names – Me, You and Us.
This may seem a little confusing, but its all a matter of perspective. Specifically, first person perspective.
PART 1 – ME
The ME we’re referring to isn’t me, as in Deirdre Amies, your Fun Business and Money coach. The me part is YOU, the person listening right now, the business owner, entrepreneur and all round amazing, creative, talented human being.
Its you in the first person, how you define and talk about yourself.
The ME part is made up of your brand, your money mindset, your expertise, your goals and dreams for your business and what freedom and success look like for you.
I want to know ALL of that about you, not just because it gives me goosebumps when someone gets really open and vulnerable about their dreams. But also because its empowering for YOU to say it out loud, its not a secret thought hidden away inside your head.
Thats often overlooked by coaches and mentors, they’re focused on THEIR area of expertise in building an audience, writing content, email sequences and using social media platforms.
They assume you already have that foundational stuff sorted, but as I’ve discovered from countless conversations with online business owners over the years, most people DON’T!
Sure you’ve made a good go of it to now, you’ve built your business just fine so far by winging it, but thats not a great strategy for the long game.
You really can scale and grow a successful SIMPLE business that gives you the time and financial freedom you want, if you’ve got a solid foundation to build it on.
When I talk about your brand its not about colours or a logo or a business name. Its the energy of YOU, the personality that is the driving force behind it all.
Thats what gives life to your marketing, and its not something AI is going to replicate anytime soon. I hope it never does because I like doing business and communicating with HUMANS, not robot generated words.
PART 2 – YOU
The YOU part is your clients. Who are the people you LOVE to work with? They’re fun to be around, you’re excited to work with them, they do the work, they get the results they want and happily pay you what you ask for your expertise.
How do those people spend their money? What triggers them to pay money for something they want? Are they sitting on a healthy savings account and can happily pay you in full without asking for discounts? Or are they going to whack it on the credit card and hope their investment turns out to be a positive one?
Of course you can’t control how people buy, but understanding the different money personalities certainly takes away some of the stress for YOU and makes money and sales conversations a lot easier.
There are countless systems and methods for working out your ideal client avatar, your dream clients, your yes clients, whatever you want to call them.
This is often where coaches and mentors START because they assume you’ve got everything else sorted including your offers that you’re going to sell to these ideal clients.
Theres nothing wrong with that assumption at all, thats their area of expertise.
What I don’t love is seeing amazing entrepreneurs going through high ticket programs to learn launch strategies and marketing techniques, only to be disappointed when they don’t see a return on their investment – they don’t sell a single thing.
Thats really disheartening for you as an entrepreneur with big dreams. You’ve handed over a lot of money for help in this area and it would be easy to blame the coach, mentor or their program.
But if you’ve not got your foundations sorted BEFORE you launch that offer, you may as well be pouring water through a sieve hoping to catch enough for a decent drink. There are literally holes everywhere!
PART 3 – US
The third area you need to work on is what I call ‘US’. Its you and your clients working together to achieve a desired result.
In a nutshell we’re talking about your offer, but it’s also your signature process, framework or roadmap, whatever you like to call it, that your offers are built upon.
What does that framework look like? What are the steps? How is it delivered?
How can you get your clients from A to B in the simplest, easiest way possible, without you needing to overdeliver on your time or energy? And without your clients feeling overwhelmed by a disorganised mess of ‘stuff’, all the bonuses and sideline things that only serve as a distraction from their goal?
That ‘road map’ is also overlooked by many business owners, we want to get right to the front facing part of marketing where we’re talking about our expertise and sharing the link to sign up.
But what if your road map isn’t a smooth highway? Or even a well maintained country road with beautiful scenery to discover along the way?
What if its actually a back woods track that countless off road vehicles have ripped up and left big muddy holes everywhere? THAT isn’t what most people would call a fun ride, its basically a road to nowhere that leaves you feeling a bit beaten up and exhausted for the privilege of using it.
That was how I felt in a group membership a few years back. There was SO MUCH INFORMATION but zero organisation or direction. It may as well have been one of those ball pits in a kids playground where you just dive in and roll around for a bit, hoping to come up with something interesting or useful.
Obviously I personally have an aversion to memberships and theres a few reasons that we’ll go into another day, but I know many people love them. If you’re running one PLEASE make sure its organised and you have some kind of roadmap for your clients.
The US part also includes your pricing – how much does it cost to work with you? Whats the monetary exchange for the value you’re offering?
If you’ve worked through your foundations and covered everything, this part is surprisingly easy.
Its a no brainer to put a price on your work because you KNOW the value of it, you know the power of the results your clients get, and you can confidently offer them a smooth enjoyable ride to the results they want.
Hopefully you can see the picture I’m building here with all of this!
If you go straight to the US part with your offers and pricing without being crystal clear on the expertise you’re sharing, who actually needs and wants it, and how you’re going to help them, all the marketing and launch strategies in the world aren’t going to help.
Heres my big question for you – is there a disconnect in your business?
Is there an area that’s blocking the flow of your expertise getting through to the right people to eventually change their lives in some way?
If people aren’t buying what you’re offering, theres a disconnect. And chances are its got nothing to do with your marketing, sales conversations, how many times you post on social media or how many followers you have, none of that.
Is there a pothole in your process that will become a huge sink hole of stress and burn out if you ignore it much longer?
Its not a marketing problem, its a basic foundation problem. Marketing gets a whole lot easier when you can confidently explain your process without jargon, fluff or glossing over the bits you haven’t developed yet.
This isn’t the fun and flashy side of being in business, this is the behind the scenes stuff that nobody sees and it honestly feels like nobody is talking about it.
Thats why it needs to be talked about more! And why it needs to feel a lot more fun too. It doesn’t have to be a snore fest, it doesn’t have to take forever and it doesn’t have to be complicated or hard.
A simple, fun, easy, sustainable AND profitable business is built on this kind of foundation.
The behind the scenes stuff has always been my jam, I remember one of my bosses in my corporate career getting frustrated over my focus on the little details of a project we were working on. He’s a big vision type, which is great, but big visions have nothing to stand on if you don’t take care of the seemingly little things as well.
So if you’d like my help diagnosing the disconnect in your business and getting YOUR foundations and little things sorted, lets talk about IGNITE, my 1-1 coaching program for coaches, consultants and digital creatives!
This is a minimum 6 month program where we tackle all aspects of your foundations. We have calls every 2 weeks and I help you implement a strong clear roadmap for your clients so they’re not getting lost along the way.
We develop simple but powerful offers that deliver just the right amount of expertise and support that even Goldilocks would be hard pressed to say no to it. And theres no way you’ll burn yourself out delivering on the work either because you’ve got your time and financial freedom planned out.
You can send me a DM for a quick chat about it, I’m @funbusinessfunmoney, all one word, on both Facebook and Instagram.
I’m also on LinkedIn, or you can email hello@deirdreamies.com . You’ll find the links to ALL of those in the description of this episode, and in the show notes.
So thats what I’ve got for you today, as I said we’ll take a closer look at the specific areas like your niche, personal brand and all the other good stuff in upcoming episodes, so make sure you’re subscribed on your favourite pod platform and you’ll get notifications when each episode goes live.
Take care, have fun taking a serious look at the foundations of your business to diagnose the disconnect, and I’ll catch you in the next episode!
