What's the One Thing Successful Business Owners Do Differently?

All right everybody, hello and welcome to our promo day 9 where we continue talking about this beautiful summit. That this is something for each one of you to join us because this is a very easy format. If you are saying, you know what, I do not have time in my schedule, I wish I could come, but you do not have to come anywhere. All you have to do is just to click the button to register yourself. And starting June 8th, you are going to start receiving in your inbox early morning 2 interviews per day, and you'll tap to different topics. We have amazing speakers who are covering everything— the mindset, the strategies, how to delegate the responsibility, how to actually make your business growing and tap to that predictable income system that we all can, right? Now we have beautiful, beautiful, um, speakers that I brought today for you, and we are just gonna learn about them, who they are and who they are serving. And I'm starting with Dotty because I see you next to me. Hello, Dotty!

Welcome!

So tell a couple of words about yourself and who you are supporting or serving.

I am Dotty Scott. I am a 20-year veteran of website design in general. I serve solopreneurs and small business owners who want to get found online, and for whatever reason, they are currently hiding. We don't want to have anybody hiding and nobody's left behind. So that's who I am.

I love that. Beautiful. Thank you so much. Donna, share about yourself, who you are helping.

Great, so happy to be here and to meet other presenters for the summit. It's really incredible. I'm the founder of Compass Rose Consulting, and we help women business owners grow their profits through building a predictable system that's their system for growth and, um, trust— learning to trust their own instincts and their own knowledge in doing that.

Beautiful. Love that. Thank you so, so much. And Wendy, Wendy, please share. Thanks so much for joining us, and please share who you are serving.

Well, thank you, Irina, for inviting me. Um, my name is Wendy Johnston, and I am the owner of Breathe and Calm, and I am serving strong, bold women in leadership. I love the women who are getting— they're moving up in their business, they're scaling, they're kind of at that little place where they're feeling really nervous about it. Maybe, who am I to be raising my prices? Or, who am I to think I'm, I'm all this? And I'm here to say you are all that, and we're gonna breathe through it, and we're going to move from survival into thrive.

So yeah, beautiful, beautiful. And I love what you are doing. It's so important because a lot of times we are just pushing, pushing, pushing without understanding that once we feel good, yeah, everything else is going to unfold in a better way, right? Beautiful. Thank you so much. So let's start our conversation because I just wanted to ask that question, and we are going to unpack that. Why is that the two business owners, they can have the similar experience, they can have the similar training, similar offers, similar goals, and yet one person continues to grow while the other feels like they are constantly starting over? Is it luck? Is it timing? Is it mindset? Or maybe that the strategy? Or maybe there is something happening behind the scenes that most people just don't see. So today we are going to dive into what separates business owners who are struggling from the ones who are scaling. And the first point that I wanted to address, and I think it's so obvious, yet we keep forgetting about it. Scalers think differently about problems. Business owners who struggle often see problems as a stop sign, but the business owners who scale, they see problem as the part of the process. And instead of asking, why is this happening to me? They ask, what is here for me to learn? What would I want to change in order to start seeing different results? And what is actually the opportunity here? And the problem itself is really the difference, it's the way we respond to that. So this is the first point, and I want to see who wants to add something to that. I know Wendy has something because she actually works helping people to stay calm, right, no matter what's going on. Dotty or Donna, would you like to add something to that? Maybe something that you noticed from your practice?

You know, one of the things that I have noticed as far as business owners that get stuck and ones that work through it is the ones that aren't stuck, they don't have a problem. It, it may be a challenge. It's always a growth opportunity, or it's an opportunity to maybe examine some of the systems in your business that maybe aren't serving you well anymore, and there might be other options of things out there that can serve you better. So it's more of reframing it and looking at it in a different way. And then the solution comes when you, when you can do like step out of the problem and the opportunity.

Love that. So, so good. Very good. Donna, would you like to add something before we go to Wendy? I know Wendy has something to share.

Definitely. Well, one of the things that I work on is kind of a similar framework to what you outlined. In my business, we call it A-C-C-T, ACT, where we start off like assessing what's going on and then creating solutions and tweaking things and knowing that sometimes it's just a small tweak that needs to happen to change the outcomes that are, that you're getting. And then we're always looking at the numbers and tracking those. So conversion and tracking are the last two parts of that. Of like knowing your numbers and looking at them and then going back and assessing like, is this working? How's it working? Do we need to improve how it's working? And so that is also a mindset, right, of constantly— not, not like a perfectionist, like this has to be perfect, but just constantly being in that assessment evaluation of how's this working and not just hoping that it works, but really evaluating.

Yeah, and I just wanted to quickly add to that, even sometimes when things do not show up the way we desire, it's not a failure. We just, we already collected the data. Before, we did not have it, right? So look at it, now we have the data and now that data is going to tell us. What is something that we want to change in order to see different results?

Definitely.

All right. Thank you so much, Donna. Wendy, what would you like to add?

Okay. So I think for me, it's having capacity to handle, handle everything that kind of comes at you. And so especially if we own our own businesses, there's just so much for us to do all the time. And regularly coming back to the breath, coming back to our nervous system, taking soft, gentle, quiet moments so that as we go through it, you know, we can calmly look at our numbers, calmly look at, you know, doing the things in our business that really move the needle and feeling peaceful in our own skin so that we can get to those things that matter.

Mm-hmm. I love that. I love that. And it's so true, right? Because when we are caught up in the stress, we can't really think through, right? So it's great just to kind of breathe, and breath is connecting us back to the present moment. And this is super powerful. And for anybody who never try it, It's such a good tip. Beautiful. Thank you so much, Wendy. So my next point is why some people scale and then other people just struggle. It's the scalers actually focusing on revenue-producing activities, right? They want to be visible. They are entering into the conversations. They have their offers. They just talk about it. They are networking, they are following up, while the ones who struggle sitting behind the scene because they're tweaking their website, they redesign the graphics, they keep organizing their files, and they continue consuming the content. So I know Dotty has to say something about it.

Hands up, you know.

I call that busy work. It's not income-producing work. It's what we do when we don't know what to do, so we hide behind what we know, um, or we're educating ourselves so that we can make the perfect decisions and the perfect choices. And you don't need that education. All you're doing is procrastinating. There's so many business owners that do that because they either feel like they're just not quite ready, things aren't perfect. That perfection thing has killed so many businesses that opened when I opened, and like, I'm the last one standing, so to speak, amongst a certain circle of businesses here locally. And it's because they couldn't, could not get past, I have to be perfect. And I'm, I'm here to tell you, unless you're God, you're not ever gonna be perfect. And your business is never gonna be perfect. It's always evolving. As we grow, our businesses grow. If we shrink, our businesses shrink. And A lot of that can be determined by our activities every single day, like what you pointed out, Irina.

Mm-hmm. I love that. Thank you so much. Donna, would you like to add something to that?

I totally agree with what Dotty was saying. It made me think of an organization I used to work for that when I got there, their website had some typos on it. And I said, we really need to fix these typos on the website. And the leader said, well, we're going to rebuild the website. And we spent 5 years rebuilding that website twice and never launched either one of those new build websites. Um, and I don't know that we ever corrected the typos either. It just goes back to that perfection of like, get out of your own way, you know? When, you know, are you stopping yourself? And how, like, where do you need to step out of the way? And looking at that and what you're doing to say, to say to yourself, like, am I getting in my own way here? And Wendy's breathing and being present would probably help with that.

Like, totally.

Like, yes, I am, and how I'm interfering with myself.

I love that. Thank you so much. Wendy, would you like to add something to that?

Um, sure. You know, when I think about this, I think about the things we tell ourselves. There are always little cues, right? Oh my God, oh, freaking busy. If you hear yourself say that, that's a cue.

Yeah.

And oftentimes we— and I am not exempt from this, okay? This is something I work I work out.

We all, we all have the moments.

Yeah. And when I hear myself say, oh my goodness, I am so busy, that means, whoo, take a step out, breathe. And the nice thing is when you have your numbers and you're looking at your numbers, they can bring so much calm. And so like taking a step back, breathing, looking at your numbers, Clearing your nervous system, getting your nervous system quiet so that you can look at your numbers, so that you can, you know, done is better than perfect on the website, right? Like, so you can let things go a little bit.

I love that. So the next point is, and we know it, how do we stay consistent longer? Because a lot of people quit too early. Maybe somebody posts for a week, maybe somebody network for a month, maybe they launch once, maybe they try the strategy once, and then they decided it's not working. So the business owners who scale, they often stay with the strategy long enough in order to gather that meaningful data and create the momentum. And that's exactly what we were already touching upon, right? So now I wanted to go to the systems, how building the systems is helping us rather than all the time starting over. Because struggling businesses often rely on memory, and scaling businesses, they rely on systems. What does it mean? They create their onboarding processes, they have their follow-up system, They have content systems, they had lead generation system, and the goal is this is something that can be repeatable, and this is something that start creating the, the repetitive and predictable results. All right, Dotty, you know, you are the system expert.

I, I want to say about systems, um I, I have a lot of customers that push back when I mention, you know, implementing a different system to make their life easier for whatever it is. And by drilling down and really asking them where the pushback comes from, it comes from the fact that they realize that their system is slightly different all the time, which, so they don't wanna cement it into one system. But I, I want to challenge you to think a little differently on this because if you can get your follow-up system or your onboarding system to be the same every time, it takes so much relief off of your mental capacity. Because like I was saying before we started, I have a hard time remembering all the little things because there's so much to remember. But if you can put it into a system, then you don't have to remember. A good example of this is I'm constantly asking my clients that I build websites for that they need to ask their clients for reviews. And they hate it, absolutely hate it, and then don't do it and they don't have a system for it. And I was just as guilty. So I set up a system for whenever I finish a website, I drop it into a certain thing in my CRM and it automatically sends out an email to them to ask for review. That simple system has boosted my Google reviews tenfold and it has no more pressure on me to remember it, you know, and, and I would remember, oh, Well, then I'd say 6 months has gone by. I can't ask him that now. I mean, all these excuses. So a system will take that pressure off of you. And the other thing I want to say about systems is they're not set in stone. If you all of a sudden come up with a better way, you take a training, you find somebody else mentions something to you and you're like, oh gosh, that would be so good. Add to my system, then you can change your system and they can evolve with your business. So it doesn't— a system doesn't mean you're stuck in a certain way of doing things. It just helps you so that you can do more, you can do things more consistently, and you can still tweak and change them.

So great, so greatly said. Thank you so much, Dotty Scott. And I know Donna also has, has systems What, what, what you are implementing with the clients or whatever you are teaching your clients.

Yeah, we talk a lot about operationalizing your business and, you know, to tag onto what Dotty was saying, I think it's so important, especially when we're talking with people about scaling. And when you have like operating plans that are documented, you are setting yourself up to grow your business. When you can say, this is our onboarding process, and hand it to the new virtual assistant or staff member that's going to be implementing that, then you have a process that they can follow, you can train on, and you can evaluate. But if everybody's winging it in your company, then there's no standard for this is how we do it at XYZ company. And this is the client experience that we want for our clients. And this is what our staff, because they're all trained in the same way, are providing. And so I think it sets you up to scale your business, grow your business, grow your staff, and eventually to sell your business by having those operational plans in place. And then for the solopreneur, like so many solopreneurs think I'm never going to get there. But that's not necessarily true. But it helps you if you're still the solopreneur, remember how you did it and how you do it, because those little details, you're like, how did I do that? And, and then you have— you spend time and waste time trying to figure it out again. But if you have it documented, then you can go through your own documentation and say, oh yeah, that's how I set that up, or that's how I do that piece of the business. So, so true, important.

And you know what, the other piece that I wanted to add, even if somebody doesn't have anybody right now, the way energetically things work, once we start preparing ourselves, it's already the signal to the universe we are ready for that, you know, when we have more people in our business. So it's also a great way to start on expanding, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Beautiful. Yes. Wendy, what is your system to keep people calm?

Okay, so I think first off is really understanding that feeling calm is a practice and it has to be treated consistently. And so It's just, it's really crucial. I always say, you know, thinking about nervous system regulation all throughout your day in little small ways. Like I have my little aromatherapy here and there, everywhere, all over my— I just quietly, easily just kind of pick it up, breathe, and I even forget sometimes that I'm regulating my nervous system. So Yeah, I really love that. And, and remembering that it takes longer than, um, I think you always hear, you know, 20, 21 days or whatever to create a new habit. Yeah, you want to make it automatic. And so that takes a little more like 67 days scientifically. So a consistent practice will get you there consistently.

Beautiful, beautiful point. So I want— also wanted to say about that, the business owners who are ready to scale and do that, they make decision faster as well. And this is the huge thing because a lot of times business owners spend weeks deciding, should I, shouldn't I, maybe later, what if it doesn't work? Meantime The growth-oriented business owners often decide, implement, evaluate, adjust, and it's another great distinguishment, right? So once we understand that speed creates feedback, and that feedback will be able to give us that growth that we desire. And another great point, they invest in growth, whether it's coaching, whether this mentorship, technology, support, education. Because scaling business owners understand that they do not have to figure everything out alone, and they look for the ways to shorten the learning curve. And that's exactly what we are doing in our businesses, right? If somebody already knows what we want to know, we just hire these people. So, um, this is like some of the greatest points that I wanted to add and try, and they also try to stop evaluating them everything, right, by themselves. So the thing is that at some point growth requires that leverage. That means that we want to have automation in place. That means we want to have delegation in place. We want to have partnership. We want to have collaboration and we want to have the team support. Because the business becomes bigger than just one person's effort. Dotty, would you like to say something towards that?

That is very, very true. Um, even for a solopreneur, uh, you can rely on automations, on AI. There's all kinds of things out there now that can give you your own team, so to speak. I have a marketing team And none of them are real people. They're not employees, but they're tools that I've trained to do my marketing for me. So I rely on that team for marketing. Uh, so there's, there's just things that we can do that will make our lives easier. We can still be solopreneurs. I have zero intention of ever actually hiring an employee. I'll outsource things, I'll educate myself from various experts. I'm constantly growing and evolving, and the way I do things is constantly changing. But I embrace that as just part of the process. And so many, so many people actually let it stop them. Because either they don't understand something or they think they're doing it wrong. There's this wonderful thing in my environment called split testing or A/B testing. I do it on a lot of things because I don't know the answers and I rely on the data to tell me, mm-hmm, is this option better than this option? And then whatever the data says is what I go with. So it doesn't, you will never have all the answers. You need to just do, see the results, tweak, change, whatever needs to happen based on the data and move forward. And the businesses that can adapt that mindset really will grow. I've proven it over and over again.

So, so true. Love everything what you shared. Donna, what is your take on that?

Well, I think one of the things that I think about with decision-making in, in my business and with clients is what's the vision and what are your values, and let those be your guides in that decision-making so that your decision then feels good in your body you not have that feeling like, "Hmm, I'm not sure that I should have done that," that you're solid in it. And so when we take that vision of what you're building and the values that you're operating under and look at those in that decision-making process, it helps to have decisions that are in alignment with your organization and your company. And then the other thing that came to mind was just on delegation. And I think that as solopreneurs or small business owners, we often have a hard time letting go of things that maybe you started off doing yourself because you were a solopreneur. And then you get to a point where you're going to outsource it. And it's hard to give it, you know, this is like our baby. We've built this whole business and to let it go is just so hard. But it goes back to what everyone was saying earlier about having those operational plans that then enable you to delegate it more easily. But breathing through the delegation maybe is gonna help, but getting comfortable to be able to outsource when you need to and let go of some of those things when you need to, cuz that's gonna help you scale. At least for me, like, if I don't have to do the bookkeeping, it's a beautiful day.

Totally, totally. So good. Thank you, Wendy.

Um, so I always love to go back to the science of it because the science is there. Uh, if you make a goal, get clear, like Donna was saying, getting clear, number one, and having accountability, having a partner you grow so much faster. And like, having just making a goal alone, 50% more of a chance of that goal coming to fruition. Making a goal with someone, we're at 75%. Make a goal with someone, write it down, consistently checking back with it, we're over 95% of a chance of that coming to fruition. I'm like, first, I'm like, Bring those to me any day. So yeah, and I think it just does so much to quiet the system down and to make help move quicker, right? Little bit of this is like we want things to move quickly and bringing others on board. Yeah, breathing through it as Donna said, but get—

Absolutely, breathing. This is beautiful, beautiful. And the last point I wanted to bring is that the people who scale are the ones who take responsibility for results. This doesn't mean that they are blaming themselves. It means they understand that I might not control everything, but I can always control my next move. And that mindset starts creating the power. Right? And when we are in power, we start creating the action. So it's not because, you know, I took this course and it didn't work for me. It's not because my coach was not good. It's not because these people, they didn't do what they supposed to do. It's not, you know, like, okay, my audience is not engaging with me, right? The more we take the responsibility on ourselves and say, okay, how can I do it differently? So it starts generating different results, and that's exactly the most. All right, so run by and ask each one of you, what was your title of the talk and what is your free gift? Because our main invitation is for each one of you to register for the summit, because look, it's just a couple of voices, but look how valuable it is. But think about it, all the interviews, including the, the experts that show up today, just think about everybody has so many gems to share and their free gift not to miss. All right, Dotty, what's, what's your title of the talk and what is your free gift?

So first I want to say I'm excited to listen to everybody else's interviews as well. Um, the title of my talk is stop being kept the best secret. So if you are the best secret in your town for what you do, it is time for you to stop being that and to step out and become the business that people are actually contacting. My freebie is 26 Visibility Tips, and it has to do with stuff you can do on your website stuff you can do outside of your website. None of them are super technical, so they're things that all of us can do, which I think is pretty cool. I'm not giving you a list that says hire me to do this. I'm empowering you to be able to do some of these things yourself and see the results yourself that you will get. So I'm excited for it.

So cool, so cool. Just for this one gift and talk, there is a reason to register. Let's continue. Donna, what is your talk and what was your free gift?

Yeah, I agree, I'm excited to get that list of visibility tips as well. Um, so my talk is Your Way to Reliable Income: How to Build Your Own System for Creating Reliable Income in Your Business. And my free gift is called— it's my book called The Business Growth Business Growth and Profits Field Guide, and it lays out the framework that we use with clients on building that system for your business.

Beautiful, beautiful. Yay, awesome. Great, great resource as well. Wendy, how about yourself?

Um, so my talk title is Calm Bold Leadership: Why Predictable Income Starts with and I created a resource for you. It's 3 audios called 60 Seconds to Calm. It's getting, it's just allowing you a really super quick 60-second breather, ah, in your day. And I know it sounds like, what are you gonna do in 60 seconds? Just give it a shot. Because you wouldn't believe how much even just taking a breath and just sitting back, it's amazing what that can do throughout your day. So it's consistency, right? Coming back to a practice. And that's what—

And I always say Wendy has such a, you know, like great soft voice that anybody who's under stress, just turn on that 16 30-second audio and you'll come back to yourself, I promise.

I love it.

Super, super cute. Yes, yes. So thank you so, so much, Dotty, Donna, and Wendy, for showing up. And again, we are doing it for each one of you who is tuning in. We are just giving our generosity, coming here and sharing with you and just inviting you. Just all it takes is click the link, register, and you, you just have to— you are going to start receiving these interviews and you'll there are a lot of strategies, there are a lot of mindset. So pick and choose whatever you want to connect with and just see what resonates with you. And I promise, after this event, you are going to be a completely different version of you. Even if you can't listen to everything, I encourage claim the gifts because they— these are great gifts and you never know how they are going to serve you. And again, connect with the expert that resonates with you, because that's exactly why we're doing these events, so you can find your person. You can connect to somebody that you feel, this is the person I want to work with. Because again, we, all we have to do is just to take a decision and we stop being that person who struggles and we become that person that scale. And we all can do that. All right, so just click the link, register, and we also have the kickoff party this Sunday on, on the 7th. So if you want to meet the experts, if you want to mingle with somebody who is on a similar journey, come by and just give yourself that gift of connecting with people. Because again, a lot of times we might not have the people in our close, um, surroundings that are on the same, uh, life path. But when we have that connections, you never know what these connections are taking. You can make these lifetime partnerships with somebody, right? So come, just register and play fully out with us, because again, we have to participate in order to start changing the results that we are creating and have more of that predictable income, more clients, and more cash. Thank you, thank you so much. Anybody wants to add something? Everyone is good?

All right, great.

Yes, thank you so, so much. And for everybody, register and we'll meet you at the party. Bye for now.

Bye.