Creating an Aligned Business: A Framework for Entrepreneurial Joy

This is our current challenge in business right now is we're trying to figure out what is that lead generation sweet spot for us. I know when I am talking to people and I can meet them with their, you know, I can hear their story, I can hear their challenges and I can speak to them in a way that really resonates and shows them the path forward that they usually become clients.

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I am super happy to be here. Really excited to chat with you today.

Me too. You are in sunny California. Have you always been California?

No, I'm originally from the Midwest and it's not so sunny today. Actually it's been very drizzly for days actually.

It's a good point. I have seen that in the news. I did not realize you're from the Midwest. Where in the Midwest?

Northern Indiana about. I describe it as two hours east of Chicago and about 10 miles south of the Michigan border.

That's awesome. I grew up south of Chicago.

Yes, that's very small world. Very small world. So I'm a long way from where I grew up. But we love it here and we like going back to visit in the summertime. In the summer.

Exactly. Summers are beautiful in the Midwest.

I agree.

Not so much.

Oh, not my favorite.

Well, you Ben running your online business for quite a while tell us you got into this and what you focus on.

So yeah, it was a long, winding journey to get where I am now as it is for so many of us as entrepreneurs. Take it all the way back. It really started with a health and fitness blog in college. I was studying nutrition, fitness and health and dietetics and I started doing some health coaching and that was really where I call it kind of my entrepreneurial playground. I really caught the entrepreneurial bug. I mean I was always the kid having lemonade stands. But where I really started to see, oh, I think it would be really cool to run a business. And this, the business side of things, I noticed started to really interest me. Well, what didn't interest me was all the chemistry involved with getting the degree that I had set out to get. So I shifted my major to journalism and kind of narrowed my focus more into the marketing realm. And then when I graduated college, of course my, you know, little side hustle business wasn't making quite enough to support me, let alone support me in the move that I made with my who had newly become my husband to downtown San Diego, one of the more expensive places in the world to live. So I got a job at a marketing agency, started working with really big brands on primarily their social media and content marketing and realized within the first half a year there that there were a lot of small businesses out there that needed this help and didn't have that massive budget to invest and actually needed a lot of strategic help too. Which some of those bigger brands, you know, have their own internal marketing teams who are kind of directing us. And I'm a big strategic thinker. So that was frustrating to me internally. So I started just getting some clients on my own and you know, that was a whole journey in and of itself to just start out on my own and serve those first few clients, many of them being online business owners. Some I had kind of a handful of fitness based clients and then some in the online business space where I just, I was really doing done for you content marketing services. And it was through that those first couple of years providing those services that I realized there were several clients I was serving who weren't excited about the businesses they were building. And the content initiatives that I was leading the charge on were really just a response to what everybody else in the business world was saying they had to be doing, rather than an intentional decision to grow a business that they were obsessed with, more or less. And the core of who I am could not function knowing that I was helping people build businesses that felt like a prison. So I sort of dug deeper and deeper and said, you know, what's underneath this? What's the bottom line here? And I realized that if we didn't start with a clear vision and a sound business model that supported the CEO themselves and how they're hardwired to show up for success, then really nothing else mattered. So one thing led to another, and I, you know, developed a framework that I now guide my clients through and help them to build businesses that really, truly light them up, support how they're hardwired for success, fuel their. Their personal and business financial goals, and do good work in the world. Just living in their zone of genius.

So fascinating. What a cool journey unfolded there and a path you went down. Um, I worked in a marketing agency for a bit as well, and that was a lot of fun. And I totally get what you're saying, like, oh, okay. When I stepped into small business, there were a lot of things I wanted to do differently and that I love about small business. Our nimbleness. We're agile, we can move. But there were some things from corporate that were done well because obviously there are millions of, like, oh, let's get some strategy that will help us. There's a lot that goes down in corporate, like, okay, let's not take that. But there's so many things. What kind of marketing campaigns did you work on?

I worked on some for some, like, really big athletic wear companies that I think it was actually. There was an Olympics in 2016, right? Yes. So the Olympics are right around the corner. So we were working on campaigns around that. And I'll tell you just a little insider moment that this frustrated me so much that. And they were not the. I will say this. They were not the top player in the athletic wear company or athletic wear space. They were maybe like a third player. And at one point, they wanted me. One of the things I was doing was searching for people who are using, like, an unapproved hashtag to, like, report them. This was. You asked me about a cool thing. I'm going to tell you a thing that ground my gears. Sorry for answering the question. I decided to do. I was like. I remember texting my mom and being like, I think I'm being paid to tattletale right now. This is so annoying. And this is what I do with my clients now, where it's like, lean into your strengths, your gifts. So the client that I was working with, they're known for they're incredible running footwear. So marathoners love them. Ultra marathoners love them. And I was like, if you just went all in on that market, you'd have 95% of it. Instead, you're wanting us to, like, tattletail on your competitor brands that are using unapproved hashtags.

Wow. Was that out of values alignment for you?

Big time. Big time. And it's to be clear, I don't know why that example came to mind so quickly. There were lots of things that I was doing that were aligned with my values. But at the end of the day, and I'm sure you can probably relate with this and many of your listeners, I'm hardwired to run a business, not to do those. You know, I'm hardwired to strategize and run a business. I'm not necessarily hardwired to do all the doing associated with it. And I'm more of a visionary. So that was frustrating that my path in a corporate setting seemed very long to get to the point where I could really leverage those visionary skills. And even still in that type of dynamic, I felt like they wouldn't ever be fully appreciated because the client was always going to call the shot, so to speak, because they had a big enough budget.

So interesting. So, you know, and I think my kids will say to me, like, oh, mom, but you're the boss. You can keep that call. Like my boss, ultimately, my clients are running. Oh. Even on my team, my sister Emily has worked like, oh, Amber's my boss. I'm like, no, I'm not my boss. Like, you're your boss. I'm just, like, facilitating here. But ultimately, when I look at who is in charge as my clients, I work with clients where there's great alignment, but yet there has to be that alignment or everything's going to be wonky.

Totally. And I feel the same way. That that's probably a big part of why I don't feel like, you know, the resistance to someone else being in charge, so to speak, Because I feel the same way, especially in with my team, I'm like, you're the boss of the operations. Like, I trust your decisions. All that kind of thing is when there's that values alignment there. Like I'm in my lane and I feel great. There some things in the marketing agency where I was like, it felt like, you know, I had to be doing some of these things like searching for unapproved hashtags or whatever. That was totally. I'm like, this seems like a really inefficient strategy.

Yeah.

That made it feel more like that. You know, I was beholden to their whims where there might be some things that show up in the business now in my current business that are on paper it's a similar relationship, but because there's values alignment, it doesn't feel that way.

Yeah. And you know, you're bringing up something else that comes to mind in that things are going to shift in the marketplace. So not only do our clients, we feel, clients feel it like this ripple effect of oh, there's a change happening in the market and sort of started this like, oh, we're doing this because this is what people do. But no, you can get strategic. And I just read an interesting article actually that kind of reminds me of this in Entre magazine. It's about Lewis Howes and the shift he made in his business model. Do you know his business model?

To a degree. I haven't followed him for years, but years ago was very familiar with it. Yeah.

So in this article they started online consulting. You know, this is after his career and he started online marketing consulting agency and grew a mastermind and courses. I was like, oh, this is a little bit not where I want to be going. It's good but it's not where I want to be going. How do we make this shift comes to mind because you work so deeply with clients. Offer alignment. So when I was thinking about this episode article just came in feed yesterday, I'm like, oh my gosh, how timely because total shift in offer. I am at a place in my growing and running business career that I might want to make a shift here. How do people make these shifts? Whether it's the marketing, which we've been talking about, or the offer alignment. How do you know?

How do you do it? Great and loaded question. So I always love to start with. There's really three components. One, your vision. What is it that you actually want? What do you deeply desire? For some clients it makes sense for us to look 10 years down the road and then we bring it back to okay, what's like the three year next journey in the business and then what's the practice? Let's break it down to what's the next 12 to 18 months. And then of course, we can break it down to the next quarter. What's the initiative that we're gonna move forward? Right. The big vision. And I like 10 years, I like five years to go there sometimes because it allows us to get out of the how we don't have to worry about that. It's fine if it feels like a lofty dream. It can totally feel like that. And it's fine. So I love to start there. And looking at not just the vision for the business, a lot of it's about what's the vision for your life. Because if those two things don't align, there's our first clue that we need to. That something needs to shift. Right. So I love to bring it back there. And I know I'm like I said, a strategic thinker. And I don't know if you know the enneagram, but I'm an enneagram8, so I'm like, what's the impact here? So for some of us, it can be hard to come back to that visioning space. And it feels like I've done this a million times. I know from doing this work with clients for years and years and years, coming back to that and getting re grounded into your vision at least like a couple times a year is a good thing because you never know what's going to shift, tweak, change. I mean, I just had a baby five months ago, so there's elements of my vision that I could have never pictured or realized that that part of the picture maybe isn't a match until I had him. So not that my, you know, vision six months ago was wrong. It just there's a piece of who I am and what my life involves now that wasn't there, that couldn't have informed that vision. So coming back to your vision every six months or so, really getting grounded into what you want your life and business to look like, how you want to be operating. Second, I love to look at how the CEO themselves is hardwired for success. And when I say this in the simplest terms, I find personality assessments to be very, very useful tools for uncovering some of this information. Things like Myers Briggs Enneagram, even human design can be really useful. If there's a very strong mismatch in how you are energetically required to show up in your business. Your business isn't going to feel as good, you're not going to feel as good marketing it, you're not going to feel as good making sales. This was really exemplified for me, in the first three years, my business where I was doing a lot of behind the scenes done for you, content marketing work, writing a lot of blogs, creating a lot of social media posts, I am an extrovert. So first of all, I was spending a ton of time behind the scenes on my computer, alone in my own head. And that was just so draining, so draining for me. I didn't look forward to the work I was getting paid to do. I have lots of amazing introvert clients who that behind the scenes stuff that they're working on feels so juicy and delicious and they look forward to it. And that's amazing that even if they want to have a more coaching or consulting type business model, we want to usually we're looking at how can we limit the time that they're required to be on calls or at events and really contain that to a place where it still fuels them and creates a great connection with them and their clients, but still they've got a lot of space to kind of do their own thing, work behind the scenes if that feels good to them. Just as a really simple example. And finally, revenue goals. What do you want and need in your personal life to first of all meet your current needs and your what you want to be accomplishing and then the same thing goes for in your business. And those numbers compiled together are your dream revenue goals, your intentional revenue goals. And we want to make sure that there's an offer match and of course we factor in what kind of marketing is going to be required for that type of an offer. So if we're talking, you know, a lower ticket membership, you're likely going to need to sell a higher volume, which means you're going to need to reach a lot more people. Are you, can we get to a marketing strategy that also is going to support how you're hardwired for success that would allow you to reach the number of people that you would need to to sell to reach the revenue goals, selling an offer like that. So there's several different layers that we go through. But you can see we start with the vision because it's not going to support the vision. What's the point?

So good. Love all of this. You also mentioned when I was starting my business there was a lot like you do her. I'm like, well yeah, I know I can do whatever, but I wanted to dig into some of these things. If I do this, what are, what's the impact? Or what would it take to do that? All right, what's that going to take? What's my strategy going to be versus a higher point? And there are different approaches and strategies that go along with those because there are different financials and budgets and considerations in terms of reach. So how you work and show up best, which people are walking into this with or we're in the middle of it all. It's gotta align. Do you work with a lot of people or see people who start and then shift like you said, because life changes, something new is revealed.

Usually that is my ideal client, someone who's already been established or established in some capacity, and they're looking to make a significant shift to their business model or an entire pivot, you know, of what they're known for. Like a copywriter who now wants to be a sleep coach, for example.

Wow. Yes. That would be a transition in pivot. And then sometimes they're more incremental along the way. How do you get your mind around, like, okay, we're making some shifts here. Some are big, some are small. And frankly, I'm in space where we're making some. Because in some spaces, the market is demand. It means there are changes in our marketing landscape. And, you know, they're. So sometimes it's necessity that drives a change. The market is telling you, okay, it's time to make this shift. And other times for me, it's. It's totally internally driven, like, oh, I'm really enjoying this. I'm lighting up when I do this. I think it's easier for me to make a wholesale change than is incremental change. And I oftentimes find that the incremental change is what I have to do because there's like, life and things are moving. What are your thoughts as people navigate.

Some of the trans. So I like to use the analogy of a car, and this is a very challenging season for most business owners to navigate is once they've made they feel the call to make a significant shift, I often equate it to, you know, they're driving the car and you're headed down the road and you realize whether this was the right road or it was the wrong road. Either way, if you keep going on this road, it's not going to be right. So doesn't really matter. However, we need to do a U turn. And I live in California, so we drive. I mean, I would never do a U turn on the five. That would not be a good move to make. But, you know, we're driving 80, right? And we're driving 80. We're cruising along. It feels good, but you're Like, I'm not supposed to keep going this direction. So you hang a U turn, or maybe you're going to gradually shift over lanes. Well, it takes a while to get back up to speed. And what happens in that space is we start to question ourselves. We start to think, did I make a mistake? Am I ever going to get back up to speed? My intention in shifting directions is to actually exceed the speed I was going. How will that ever be possible? Because now I'm going slower than I was. It doesn't matter if you do the U turn or you do the slight lane shift. There's a slight slowdown that happens. And that's where I know mindset work is integral. Actually, before you do that, it's really integral to do some important mindset work, to know yourself enough to know those things that are going to creep up. For me, it's control. I want all the systems to avoid any chaos happening. And when those that starts to creep up for me and I want to picture also, like, how is this going to look a year from now when you're making a shift? It's hard to know. You can't 100% predict everything that's going to happen. So knowing yourself. My former coach and former client who I've done a lot of great work with, her name's Kelly Ruda. Uh, she likes to say new level, new devil. Well, that shift is you're moving into a new level and it's not even. She'll even say, you know, it's not even really new devil. It's kind of the same devil showing up in a new way and tricking you.

Yeah.

So that's where it's really find. It's very useful to have some support on the mindset side of things or to at least know, at a minimum, know that you can expect those thoughts and feelings to creep up and they're normal. They don't mean you're doing anything wrong. And to have a game plan for the shift, for making the shift, but it's not something that that's perfectly linear. You and I both know this. It's not going to be linear. It literally never is. So we're going to put a plan in place, but that's more to give us something to measure against, to adjust to shift course, to just kind of keep us putting one foot in front of the other and give us something to measure against. And then at the end of the day, I find that also having some support when you're making those shifts can be really useful to Keep you out of your own head. Whether that's expertise, you know, an expert to support you, whether it's a peer mastermind, a business bestie that you check in with on the regular, like just having some support to bounce ideas off of to help you stay the course can be really, really useful because they're making any shift. It's not linear and it's not the easiest thing to do, but if it feels aligned, you will get there, you'll get beyond where you're expecting to go.

So good. And I think this is so spot on right now because we're constant change has been brewing over the last few years. I mean there's always change. It's just been intensified and accelerated over the last few years here. So I love that you shared this and I love that analogy. Like you're not going to be able to just u turn it on the fast. You got to inch over, cross lanes, you know. Yeah. Get yourself back up to speed. Oh, so beautiful. One of the other things that you know is brewing for a lot of people and I think maybe really aligned for a lot of people. It's something that you talk about called low key launching with intimate workshops and you know, as, as marketing shifts and we're being forced to change lanes in some instances. You got a cool approach here. What can you tell us about the low key, the intimate workshops?

So this was my response and we've done the bigger launches in 2020. We did a couple bigger launches with, you know, lots of ads and a five day challenge and all the things and those can be great and there's a time and a place for them. And we were also selling something that was a bit, it was kind of a lower ticket course based offering which again like we kind of talked about is we needed higher volume to meet our revenue goals there. As our business model has shifted to higher ticket, higher touch, high commitment in terms of time commitment because I want to help someone navigate the full shift so as they're, you know, they know they want to shift into the direction they're headed is not the direction they want to be going anymore. I want to help them inch over, do the U turn if necessary, get back up and beyond speed with everything feeling really good. And that takes more than a month. It takes more than three months. So our business model itself has really gotten grounded in what I feel like I'm hardwired to do, which is support people through that full shift. And, and what we found has worked really, really well for me energetically for our right Fit clients is hosting more intimate workshops where I can introduce people to a topic or kind of meet them where they are. So one of our signature workshops is called Ace your core offer. And it's really for that business owner who is wanting to make a shift. And they know either their existing offer needs to be shifted along with the rest of the business for the business to be able to shift, or they're wanting to craft something really new that is fully aligned to them. And we host this workshop a couple times a year and it's usually, you know, we typically never have more than about 30 on, usually even less than that. Cause I love to be able to really collaborate with people and help to provide strategic insights during those. And that's tough to do if you've got 60, 70, 80 people on a workshop. Certainly, you know, there's a time and place for those. But we, I really love when I get that interactive moment and we get to go deep. So I take them through portions of what I described to you is kind of how do you get started with making these shifts? And I walk them through those steps and we talk about it. And I'm doing a little consulting, a little coaching moments with them. And the nice thing about those intimate workshops is they get a chance to experience, you know, direct support from me. And we typically will do a follow up moment with people where I'm getting on a call with them one to one to kind of tie up any loose ends. And I introduce our signature offer during that workshop. I don't spend a ton of time on it, but I at least introduce it so people know there's a way for them to receive additional support to make that full shift with me. And then we get on a call because one, I want to make sure they're a fit if we're going to work together for typically what's a year? And I want to make sure that it is a right and aligned next step for them. And also so much of the launching, the way launching has been done for years, which is typically with the intention of high volume. Let's bring in a thousand new customers for this course or a hundred, 150 new clients for this high ticket offer. And there's salespeople involved and there's all these things that a lot of people have been sold into, things that weren't necessarily the best fit for them. So I don't wanna say gone are the days of selling high ticket on webinar because it's not true. But for us, for my own values alignment, I Like for that trust to really be solidified in a one to one moment. And that's what works well for us. It takes the pressure off of having the most perfect pitch during the workshop. I can really focus on serving in the workshop. And it also because of our business model and because of how I'm supporting people in that container. We don't have to have 50 people or a hundred people or 500 people signed up, quote unquote signed up for a launch. We can have 20 and still meet our revenue goals.

I love it. And how many people do you typically work with a year?

Up to about 40 max. I love the deep. I mean I call myself a strategic partner through the growth and development of my clients businesses. So I'm thinking about their businesses all the time and you know, I'll find myself sitting down in the evening and I'll get a really good idea. Oh this, you know what, this will be a great workshop idea for Melanie here. I'm going to. Usually I'll text myself. We use Voxer back and forth with them but. And I tell them you can ping me on Voxer whenever you want. I have my notifications turned off. I have good boundaries. I'm only going to check in when I check in but I'm like, I don't know if they do so I'm not going to ping them on Voxer at 11pm so I'll text myself and then I'll send it to them the next day. And I wouldn't be able to do, I wouldn't have as I know myself and I know I wouldn't have such fruitful ideas for all of my clients if I were serving say double that. Number 40 is about my, my max of clients that I feel like I can have a really intimate relationship with.

I love it. And do you right now have just one core offer that you serve people through?

Yeah, I do offer one to one strategic partnership, but that's for a very specific type of. Usually it's for a specific type of business owner. I say that I've had a few who are, you know, just in a time zone that really doesn't match up with the group who've said, I want to work with you, let's make this happen. So we've worked out something for us to work together one to one so they can get that support. Typically those who work with me one to one have larger teams and I have plenty of people who work with me in my signature offer, which is a group consulting program. I have plenty who work with me who do have teams. But a lot of times if there's, you know, director of Ops involved and lots of other players who I'm. It makes sense for me to get on calls with them as well. Then usually that, that's a nice one to one relationship that we kind of keep it strictly one to one. But yes, my group signature offer, elevate and Impact is like the light of my life. And that's what I serve most of my clients through.

I love this and this gives good context for people who are thinking about the intimate workshop because there are a number of ways to sell the gamut. Right. We can. Lots of ways to sell and market. Low ticket, high ticket, all the. And I love some of the nuances and things you called out here. The workshop. How many people? About 30 people is the sweet spot. How often are you running these throughout the year?

So Acer core offer, we. Last year we did it three times. Yeah, last year we did it three times. This year we'll probably do it twice. Though that's not necessarily the only workshop we'll do. I think last year we did now and I was on maternity leave for 12 weeks, but I think we did maybe five workshops and one was a joint venture workshop that focused on finances and things like that along with your offer. So I did five last year. This year will probably stick with about four workshops.

Okay. I love it. And as you think about those, as people are preparing for these and stepping into these, are you marketing them the same way as you would market, you know, anything else?

This is our current challenge in business right now is we're trying to figure out what is that lead generation sweet spot for us. I know when I am talking to people and I can meet them with their, you know, I can hear their story, I can hear their challenges, and I can speak to them in a way that really resonates and shows them the path forward that they usually become clients. And what we're. What we're trying to do is scale some of that messaging. And I will just full transparency here. We've tested a number of different ad strategies. Last year that was a real challenge for us. We saw engagement with the ads that we were running to some of these workshops. Not a whole lot of conversion. And with me going on maternity leave for all of Q4, we were just in a bit of a time crunch of what we could do to test. And I don't know if you've been running ads or your listeners have been running ads, but those are getting significantly more expensive. And slightly less effective due to tracking purposes. So it can take longer to figure out what actually works. And I just kind of had to make a decision, do we want to keep pouring into this to figure out what works or do we want to test something else out? And I just decided I wanted to test some other things out. So we've been testing more organic strategies and I'll be perfectly honest, the thing that works really well for us is direct connection. Me attending events, me hopping on podcasts, and me connecting with the people who are actually engaging with our content online. So there is obviously, you know, staying present organically online. Does it brings in some of the people who then we can go connect with. I'm not a big fan of like cold spammy DMs whatsoever, but just actual real relationship building. Again, we're playing around with some more scalable solutions, but it's a testing phase. It really is. And I'm super straight up with my clients about that too. That for those of us who are in the, you know, right. Either right around six figures or where we are, which is, you know, the several multi six figure mark, you kind of got to test a couple of things to see what's working. And I think things are shifting from a marketing front. So that's where we're doing a lot of testing and experimenting. Difficult for my inner control freak at the moment, but I'm in it for the long haul.

Hard not to know and to be like, all right, here we go.

But.

And I, when I talk to some of my marketing colleagues, I'm like, oh, we got really spoiled.

Really spoiled.

Because even right, yes, the ads were working and they will, they are working. It's just happening. It's a little bit different. And we've got some new things to figure out and new things to test and try. And we're definitely in a shift. But like, we were spoiled. We were so spoiled because we could get data back so quickly for such a long period of time now. And now it's a little, okay, we're getting data back, but is it. Which is right and where. Yeah, gotta play a lot more.

Yes, exactly. And it can be daunting. So with a lot of our clients, that's again where we're looking at alignment. What's their budget, their time capacity, and what can you find as their sweet spot for a marketing strategy or two? Because I'm not a fan. Especially if you, you're in the midst of a shift or you've just made a shift. If you go try to do put all your eggs in a basket. Unless you've had something that's worked really, really well for you. I'm not the biggest fan of just let's pour all of it into getting podcast interviews. Why not kind of diversify a little bit? I don't want to stretch people too thin, but diversify a little bit. Test some things out so that you have a greater chance of figuring out one what's feeling really good to you, to what's working well for your brand and what you can dial in further to get even better results.

Oh my gosh. So good. I will keep you here all day digging into this. New questions keep coming up, but I know that you've got other things shaken over there today, including congratulations on your new addition to your family.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, first baby and he's five months old now. Oh my gosh.

Oh, seven months old now. Five. Oh, five. That's why I thought, I'm like, wait, I missed a month or two in there. The. This is amazing. Have you had to make big adjustments welcoming this little guy into your, your life and your business?

Yes. I mean, yeah, simple answer is yes. Fortunately, you know, I work from home. My husband's my business partner. And this was something that was in the back of my mind when, you know, I was strategizing for the business years ago. Just like I talk about with my clients. Starting with that vision in mind, you know, I think we pretty much started to evolve the business to where it is now, I would say about three and a half years ago, four years ago. And I always had in my mind, you know, I'd like something that I'm not on one to one calls all day long. I've got some time flexibility. I've got space to be able to show up and be really present with my kid, you know, kid. And we know we want multiple so kids in the future. And I love, you know, help around the house. I'm good with. I just, my personal choice is to not have like, you know, five day a week nanny, five day week childcare at this moment, at this moment in this season. I'm really grateful for to be able to be present with him. And so yes, that's required some adjusting in terms of how my husband and I kind of tagged him throughout the day, how I show up. One of the things we did, we used to do a. I mean, I still have live calls with clients, but one of the things we used to do was an office hour on Monday that was just sort of for rapid Fire questions, not so much of the digging deep stuff which you know, we have a time and a space for that. But one thing we did last year, it was kind of sorta, it was already a plan for my maternity leave to do this, but we did it earlier than expected and that is shifting those to just voxer back and forth moments and. Cause I didn't love the idea of totally not knowing what was happening in my clients businesses for 12 weeks. So what we said is, okay, we're going to do voxer office hours. Well, there'll be a break right around when the baby comes, but that's where you know, you can still pop anything in there and I'll jump in once a week and kind of touch base. We started that earlier than expected though. My son was born in October, but we started doing office hours that way in I think it was June. Because what I realized is so many of my clients are also moms and moms with the school age kids. Their normal schedule and normal spaciousness got totally blown up in the summertime. So having one less place to be during the week where they needed to show up in a place at a specific time to get those rapid fire questions answered, we just said, well, we'll throw it on Boxer that way. If the question comes to you at midnight or two in the morning, I don't care, drop it in there and I'll circle back during Boxer office hours.

That's fantastic. And you know you mentioned your clients adapted, you adapted, everybody sort of adjusted. This is one of the beautiful things. Sometimes you're like, oh, I committed to this or this is what we said. So we got to keep going. But sometimes just check because it may be okay and better for everyone as we grow and evolve. We're doing it together and we're co creating all of this and it allows for really beautiful things to unfold.

I love the ability to co create the experience with, with our clients. It's been really powerful. And when you're attracting those aligned clients, each decision you make is going to be a win, win, win, win.

Ah, Ann Marie, where can people find you if they want to learn more about everything you just shared in this incredible episode?

Yeah, so I am, I would say most active over on Instagram. I'm at ask a SK AnnMarie Rose and that's where I hang out. I'm in the DMs, we chat. I have a lot of fun over there. I'm on Stories all the time. Stories are a mix of business and life. So I love to connect over there. I'm also on TikTok, same handle. One of the things that I'm really, really passionate about is business owners being focused on the most important thing in their business. It's very hard to be feel like everything is important. And I remember those days of feeling like everything was so important. You know, I need to shift the messaging on my site. We were talking about before how some stuff on my site still says a lot of things about quizzes, which was something that I talked a lot about in 2020, 2021, but I've shifted a bit on that front. But my site is not fully updated because that's not the top priority right now. So if anyone's listening in there thinking, you know, I am feeling like everything is so important. I feel like I need to make a shift, but I don't know if it's just do I need to shift my messaging, do I need to shift my marketing or do I need to come back and make a shift to my offers? My business Breakthrough quiz, which is at bizbreakthroughquiz.com will help you get, you know, answer a few questions and really clarify what is the top priority for you right now to experience the growth you want without feeling like you're super stretched thin.

Thank you much for hanging out today.

Thank you so much for having me. This was a fantastic conversation and I can't wait to hear what people think of it.

I think not. Wait to hear what you take away from this and if you test or try any of the strategies Marie shared. Thanks for being here everyone. See you soon. What a beautifully flowing conversation we had. From online marketing to preparing for maternity leave and changing and shifting things after having their sweet baby to shifting offers and shifting your messaging, we covered a lot and know that every single day in your business and in your life, you are covering a lot and getting a lot done. If you ever feel you've got overwhelm burnout creeping in like your focus isn't clear, have something for you. I want to invite you to unlock your focus, motivation and follow through over@staygolden.com this is the place. Start to get focus and clarity on your goals and bring that to life step by step, moment by moment, with a whole lot of focus and out all the pings and dings from all over the Internet but really focusing in on what matters most to you right now and what's going to take you to your next level. So check out staygolden.com to unlock that focus. Click and follow through.