Episode 53: It’s here! Our most comprehensive online program ever!

Get ready, because everything is about to change. There's a new way of living life and doing business that will blow your mind. This is a podcast all about the timing of life and the timing of success. It's what we call the Right on Time Life. And you are listening to the Right on Time podcast with Amber McHugh. Hello. Hello. Welcome to the Right on Time Podcast. I'm so excited to be here with you today. And you know, I've got some news. I've got some things that have been happening over the summer as we roll into the fall of this year. And I thought I would just grab a cup of coffee and chat. We could hang out, we could catch up. I made some notes on things that you may be interested in because there are some wild things happening in the last few months on my end and I thought, you know, this might help someone. So I am going to share those things with you as we hang out today. I have got my cup of coffee I had to order today because it was out of my ingredients and I did not catch it soon enough to go get go get my upgraded supplies. Very specifically, I make my own cold foam at home. If you're familiar with that, it's just, if you're not familiar with that, it's that thick layer of cream that is delicious. It's just delicious. And so I usually make my own at home and I do that on iced coffee or I do it on warm coffee just in the morning. And I was out of the heavy whipping cream. The heavy whipping cream is the most dairy I get in my diet because I just love that cold brew, cold foam, or warm foam when it goes on my hot coffee so much. We're out today, so I was committed still to having a cup of coffee. So I took advantage of Uber Eats. Since there is food delivery where I live right now, I don't always have that luxury. And I'm here having a cup of coffee with you. So I hope you are hanging out, doing something awesome or if you are just chilling, let's have a drink together and let's dive into some things that are happening on my end. And of course, if any of this resonates with you, if you're like, oh, yeah, I've been there, or oh, that helped, or, oh, I'm going through something similar right now. Please, I would love to hear from you. Like, subscribe, reply on the podcast wherever you're listening or find me on instagram@instagram.com Amber McHugh that just reminded me of something else I wanted to tell you that happened this summer. So I'm going to make a note of that. Here we go. Let's dive in. So this summer, you know, I, in the summer like to take a solid several weeks off. My goal every year is to have at least six weeks of vacation time. So I was a little nervous about this summer because if I would get that time in, if I would, would have that space and what it would look like if I was able to squeeze something in. And what happened was that this summer I was working on a revamp of our content. We have a program that we had, we ran several years ago, maybe 2015, maybe for a minute in 2017, we ran this program as well, and it was called CEO School. And CEO School didn't quite feel right anymore because so many business owners, yes, we are constantly learning, but we are implementing, we're doing it every single day. And I don't want people to look at this as a school, that someday I'll apply this right. But wanted to look at it more of a, you know, we're going to be in it and we're doing this work together. And the tools and the resources that we have for you are going to help you get ahead. They're going to help you implement, they're going to help you streamline. So we wanted to reorganize that content and we wanted to make it comprehensive. Because I've created a lot, a lot of materials over the years since I've been doing business Both at Amber McHugh, where I consult, and in our photography business, Three Boudoir. And so we wanted to just organize it, get freshen it up, make it more streamlined and easy for the business owners we're working with to go through. So we had a big project to rebrand and rework all of our content from CEO School and other miscellaneous content we've created throughout the years into a new experience called the modern CEO. And you can check it out@ambermcch.com modern CEO but it's incredible. I actually am peeking my eyes over every now and then now as I'm speaking right now, because I've got some of those materials on the screen because I'm using them every day. I met with some clients yesterday. They asked specific questions about KPIs. What are my strategic priorities right now? What should I be focusing on? How should I think about this differently? Okay, those are my strategic priorities. How do they pull through to the people I may need to be working with? And then integrating KPIs for each of those roles that align with the strategic priorities you have in your business. So I had that up because of the conversation yesterday and it's incredible. But it was a lot of work putting all of that together and reorganizing that content. Because I've ran programs before where we built the content after we enrolled and invited people into the program. The first ever group experience I ran, actually the first two group experiences I ran, one was called Play Bigger and one was called how to Clone Yourself, which, yes, is all about cloning yourself, not only through team, but through systems. And how can we be better stewards of our time as business owners? So that was the second program. And I ran both of those programs in a way that that information was created and delivered right on time. Literally right on time. I was creating it the weekend before it was being delivered to clients and sometimes unexpected stuff came up and I was up late creating that content. It taught me a ton. I'm super grateful for that experience. But we have so much content now. I needed to be, I needed to be more proactive with that. So I felt really good about what we were putting together. And I feel really good about not being last minute things, being ahead, allowing my team to be able to help me and get ahead as well. So the modern CEO encompassed three core sections. There are actually three core books. One on CEO systems. How are we running our business? How do we lead our business? The second was on sales systems from end to end, from offer to message to your million dollar marketing plan. What do we need to be thinking about to scale and grow the business? And then the last module that we included, the last book, the last collection of videos is it's client success systems. And those client success systems are really important to me because so often in our businesses, when we're creating businesses, so much of the support that we receive, so much of what we spend our time on is related to sales and marketing. And I firmly believe and see and know that when we can have an incredible client experience like, wow, that's everything for me because I want my clients to get results. I want my clients to feel heard, seen. I want that connection with them. I want to know my clients so I can better serve them and support them. And we do this in both of our businesses. Ambermce.com and 3boudoir.com so these are strategies that apply for most businesses really. Nordstrom has incredible client experience, right? Retail Disney in the entertainment space really focuses on client experience. So the best brands bring client experience and taking care of their clients to the forefront. I also believe that taking care of teams and taking care of people pulls through and helps create incredible client experiences. So there are many things woven into this. But boy do I love what we have created in the Modern CEO. So here's some behind the scenes. We created this content, we reorganized it. We had done market research. We knew that this was valuable. We had done a ton of work on our messaging as we are reorienting this program. And one of the things and I'll tell you more about the Modern CEO over time, but right now I want to share a little behind the scenes on the enrollment that we did associated with the Modern CEO this summer. So total behind the scenes here because I don't want to keep you all day. I'm going to give you the short story of this and if there's interest later, we can go into a longer episode with more more of the breakdown. But we were running this enrollment. We had planned to run this enrollment for the Modern CEO in June, but we wanted to make it so extraordinary. We wanted the content to be so spot on that we needed to push our enrollment to July. So we weren't able to invite people into the experience until July, which was totally co. Totally fine. I'm cool with shifting timelines and deadlines, but there were a series of events coming together in the July timeframe where number one, it's summer. And after a year and a half of many people not going out and about, people were going out again. So attention span dropped. Yes, of course people are focused on enjoying life and being with their families and going on adventures like I wanted to do as well. I had to finish this first. I had to see this through. So we, we had that going on. People were out and about iOS changes were made that impacted Facebook ads activity. So that was another big thing that was like, oh boy, what is happening here? And with that in mind, we could see so something we talk about in the modern CEO are looking at your KPIs so you can predict your future. And we go into detail on how to do that and numbers you may want to look at and trends and things you can observe that are going to help you see what's going to happen in the future of your business. And we could see as we are looking at our crystal ball, so to speak, that with all of the things that were happening, the goals we had originally set for this enrollment season, for the number of people that we could serve, it was going to change. We could serve many more still. But because of the landscape and because of everything that was going on, like, oh, it's just not going to happen. People are out enjoying life. We're going to serve the people who are here right now and who are working on their business right now and who want to grow and evolve as leaders in their business. And we're going to expand this later. So midway through this enrollment season we realized we're not going to hit the original goals we set. How do we feel about that? Don't love it. But that's okay. That's okay. It's totally okay because we have scenarios outlined where we're going to make up for that. We're going to adjust, we're going to accommodate so our enrollment. And you know, part of me, one of the first thought that comes to mind is like our enrollment tanked. But that's absolutely not true. We have an incredible community that came together and I love working with this group. I always love no matter how many people. Right. So if you are someone who thinks about the numbers and gets attached to the results, I go back to, so what? Ok, so what if we don't hit our goals? How am I going to feel? I am going to feel great. I am going to feel great that I get to show up and serve five people. I'm going to feel great that I get to show up and serve 10, 20, 30, whatever the number is, I love it. In addition, we shift our shifted our mindset to this idea that okay, this is our test launch, this is our test. So typically when we are doing a new product, when we're enrolling in something new, I do a bit of a micro test. I call it failure proofing your business, Fail proofing your business. When we test, when we get data, when we get insights in advance, we can adjust, we can adapt, leading us to fail proof. So we're not going all in on something that's not going to work. So we started to shift our mindset and look at this as well as a test. This is definitely something in upcoming seasons I'll share with you how to think through and implement in your business. But this is our test. So did our ads work? Our ads, the message worked, but we didn't have enough reach. So there are different elements of this that you test, right? When people became a part of the enrollment experience, how many people enrolled in the program after going through the event that we hosted for them? Okay, that number was pretty solid. We were at 4%. I feel good about that. So now I have some data that's going to help me inform future decisions in our business. And it's going to help me predict what we're going to do in the future and how we're going to do it and the results that we're going to get. So we started to shape and craft and build our very own crystal ball. So that is what I spent a lot of time on this summer. We were committed to that. We had a goal to get that done in the spring. It shifted a little bit. The goal and our results shifted a little bit. You know what I did after that? I hit the road, baby. We have been planning for a while to go on a road trip to see a little bit of the West. I have lived in California, I have spent time in California and I flew in for work short trips to other cities out west. But I hadn't really experienced it. So it was a goal of ours as a family to road trip and to see more of the United States. I've definitely seen more of other continents than I have North America. And we wanted to explore the US a little bit. So we hit the road the day after our enrollment for the modern CEO ended. In fact, I hosted our onboarding call on that Friday and my husband and my kids were literally waiting for me to wrap up that onboarding call so we could get in the car and start our trip. And we stopped in Minnesota. We stopped at a super cool camping spot in South Dakota called Cow Creek. I believe it's Cow Creek or Cow River. Oh my gosh, it was beautiful. I'll post some pictures on my Instagram so you can check that out. Actually, there are already pictures on my Instagram of Cow Creek. Start with the sunflower and they're in there on my instagram.com Amber McHugh then after South Dakota, we bolted over to Yellowstone. We were able to camp in the park. Then we stopped at City of Rocks in Idaho, which was pretty much in the middle of nowhere desert. But there were, it was a city of rocks where there were rock climbers. And we got to Boulder a little bit with the kids. So we didn't have rock climbing equipment. But we bouldered and climbed up some pretty steep, some pretty steep climbs. That was a ton of fun. Then from Idaho, City of Rocks, we drove over to Lake Tahoe. And Lake Tahoe at the time that I am sitting here speaking to you is going through a lot. The large fire, the large caldera fire is headed to Lake Tahoe. And so I feel so grateful that we got to see that and experience that. And my heart is feeling so much for everybody who is experiencing these large weather events right now. And Lake Tahoe is one of them. So thinking of everyone there as well. Then after Lake Tahoe, we went and spent a night at Yosemite. Then we met my daughter who's going to school in Santa Barbara. We met my oldest daughter Lily there and stayed in the Santa Barbara area for three nights to recuperate, to shower after that road trip and a whole lot of camping. Then we went down. It's not over yet. This went on and on. Then we went down to Phoenix to stay with my sisters who are living in the Scottsdale area now. We spent some time there with them and it was really hot. Really, really, really hot. It was like 120 degrees, so it was hot. We had more trip planned. We were going to go over to Zion and Canyonlands after that, but we thought, okay, that's a little hot. I don't know if we want to be camping in this right now. So we actually have a camp, a tent that is attached to the top of our car. There are pictures of that on my Instagram too. So we camped on the top of our car. Like it's going to be too hot. So instead of going to Zion and Canyonlands, which we're going to have to go back to at some point because, wow, how beautiful are other people's pictures I'm seeing of this location. But after that, we instead went to Amarillo, Texas. Oh, no. Albuquerque. First we drove through Albuquerque, we stopped in Amarillo, and then we bolted back up to the Chicago area where we're currently living. So that took us about 16, 17 days. Then we took a one week break at home. I was working a little bit throughout the second week of that trip. The first seven days I didn't do anything because I didn't have a lot of signals. So it was read, read a lot of books in the car, hung out with the kids, enjoyed every minute of every stop that we had. And then I worked a little at my sister's place, had calls with our Modern CEO clients, with my freshly implemented Mastermind clients. And then we took a week when we got home and recharged. I did a lot of work that week. My husband had stuff going on. The kids were happy to just see their friends for a minute. And then we spent another week in Gatlinburg. I worked about 10 hours that week as well, but I was hanging with a business colleague and their family. Our families did a joint adventure in Gatlinburg in a cabin there. So it was Such a gift. So while I didn't have a single straight four weeks of summer, I had three solid weeks, a catch up week in between. And I mentioned that I like to have six weeks of vacation a year. I also did a spring break. So three plus that one plus two at the end of the year, I'm at least at 5 and I might do one more break around Thanksgiving. So no, are these steady, like completely not working every week? 1, 2, 3, 4. The Christmas breaks. There isn't a ton of working there either. So it is about four weeks of no work recharge. But I am telling you that time that month in August where I was working about 10 hours a week or the one week where I was completely off, I came back from that feeling. So recharged. A surge of emotion just hit me. Maybe you are hearing that in my voice. I feel so grateful to have had that time and I feel so grateful especially at the end there to have that family time. Because my friend and I, we are talking business. Our husbands would chime in and share and we would strategize together and then we would go back to whatever we were doing. And it was such a nice way where we integrated business and life and family. So beautiful experience. I hope that I encourage you, I invite you to identify what kind of time off would I like for a long time. Like we didn't take vacations as a family for a very long time. Basically the whole time we lived in Maryland, we didn't even go down. Like there are ocean towns south of us. I didn't spend a lot of time in the Northeast. I mean there were incredible areas to explore there that I did not take advantage of. And when we moved to Africa, I'm like, I am going to enjoy every minute of this. We're going to see as many places as possible. And we did. Cape Town, Nairobi, Masai, Mara, Tanzania, Zanzibar, Dubai, like Europe. We went to Rome and I went to Tuscany to meet a friend and a client at a retreat. And we just made sure that we fully took advantage of like I need to do that no matter where I am living. And it could be something different for you, but I want to just invite you to explore what that is for you and let's take steps to make it happen. And that's what being a modern CEO is about. A better business isn't where it ends. A better business means a better life and it can take some training for us to make that transition to enjoying life as well. So I enjoy life always, but I Knew I wasn't fully detaching and fully releasing from the commitments I made in my business. So I wasn't fully recharging. And you may need something else, but invitation to explore that and examine that. That is three things I wanted to share with you. There are two more things I want to share with you. I'm going to keep it quick because I don't want to keep you here all day. And if you are drinking something right now, if you have a beverage with you. Cheers. Cheers. I grabbed a quick sip of my cold brew. And now I want to share with you the two other things. Throughout this year, one of our goals in Both businesses, Amber McKeown and Three Boudoir has been to streamline. And the Three Boudoir side, we are now in 20, 26 cities. 26 flipping cities. This is, I mean, this is just unreal. We started with my business partner and I shooting out of my house. I mean, what a wild ride. And now we're in 26 cities. So blown away by this. But we don't want it to get complicated. We don't want it to take hours, hundreds and thousands of hours for us to manage team. Right. We want people to be empowered and we want our team to just love what they're doing and be inspired to do it. So there isn't a lot of micromanagement and our systems are set up so things can be streamlined for our teams so they don't have to ask us a million questions. And again, they're empowered to do what they know they need to do to get results in their role and to get results for themselves personally. So 3B is growing. Amber McHugh is doing its thing and I see opportunity to streamline there. So this has been a year of streamlining. So we've been streamlining, streamlining, streamline, streamline. And it's been amazing. We're going to keep on streamlining. It doesn't happen right away. There's some quick hit things from like, oh, I feel that that's all good to streamline. And there are other things. I'm like, okay, we're getting there. We're getting there. We're going to be there right on time. We got to stay this course of streamlining. And I was speaking to a client today in a one on one exchange. And I asked her, she said, it's always been hard for me. Everything's always been hard for me. Oh, I'm feeling for her. And maybe you can relate to this. If it's ever always been hard for you. I even thought of an experience where I would see other people hitting their goals and getting first class upgrades and getting the hotel upgrade. I'm like, what? I never got any of this. I realized in that moment part of streamlining is asking ourselves, how can it be easier? How can it be easier? Everything I'm doing, everything I want, everywhere I want to go, how can it be easier for me to get there? That's it. You don't have to have the answers right now. You just have to ask the question and answers will come. So with this in mind, I want to invite you today to live a little, right on time. And I want to invite you to continually ask yourself, how can it be easier? And this is where I want to leave us today because we've got a kick butt lineup coming for you as we move into our new season of the Right On Time podcast. We've got guest speakers coming up who are going to show you how to build your evergreen offers. We're going to show you how to get sales more easily. They're going to. We're going to talk with experts on how to run your business as a mom and how to hire your first OBM if that's something you're looking to do. We've got an incredible lineup, but I wanted to kick this off with us connecting after an incredible few months of being off, of working hard and enjoying summer. I hope you did. Or if you are on the other side of the globe, you are going to be rolling into summer soon and I am just going to be straight up jealous. So enjoy your summer if it is coming. Still, thank you for spending time with me here today, just catching up with our coffee in hand. I cannot wait to hear from you. Reach out to me in a review here on the podcast or on instagram @amber McKeugh. We'll talk soon. Remember, everything you are doing is right on time.