Today I wanted to talk to you about what it looks like to build a business that you don’t need a holiday from. I know you might be saying “Amy that sucks. I love holidays. Why would I want a business that I can’t take a holiday from? That sounds like my worst nightmare.”
And I promise you that that’s not the angle we’re taking it from today. We are more so looking at creating a business that you don’t NEED a holiday from. You might still want holidays- which I totally want. I love traveling. I love relaxing, especially in the summer. At the moment in my business. I have almost all of summer, mostly off. That’s the way I’ve set my business up and designed my business because I love summer. Summer is my favorite time of the year. Why wouldn’t I want to be spending summer with my loved ones and my family getting to make the most of the time that I have. With the people I love.
In Tassie which is where I live, it is cold most of the year. So that’s why I take all the summer off. That also means my team can have the summer off as well to spend time with their kids while they’re on school holidays which is really important to me. Because family time you don’t get back when your kids are at that age.
I also love to travel. And so I love holidays, but I don’t need a holiday to survive. I don’t need to take a holiday to survive, to get out of my business because I’m running myself to burn out all the time.
When I worked in corporate, I lived for my four weeks of annual leave a year. I actually don’t think I would have survived if I didn’t have a holiday to look forward to or something to keep me going and to deal with the burnout every year. So when I left corporate it was really important for me to build a business that I didn’t get exhausted from running or that lead me to burn out every year. It has enough time and space for rest, for me to look after myself properly, that I don’t actually get to the point where I’m running myself to burnout and desperately need a break from my business. I have created my business and set it up to work around a life that I actually love. And this was a real intentional process.
When I first started my business I built it as a traditional marketing agency where I was scaling the way everyone tells you to scale a traditional marketing agency. So I had been picking up the big 10K a month clients, I had been scaling my team, hiring marketing managers and was looking for the fancy office in town. I was doing everything that on paper a successful business looked like and I ended up growing a business that hit it’s first 6 figures in the first six months.
But what it led to, was me working ridiculous hours, I was dealing with high level clients, constantly dealing with their demands, at every hour of the day, I was dealing with the staffing issues that comes with building a team and I didn’t get to do any of the creative work anymore- which is what I loved most when I started. I loved getting to dive deep and work with clients in close collaboration, where I’m actually getting to really work alongside them to help them grow their business. That’s what I really love. I just didn’t love working with large businesses where they are more just offloading all their marketing to you and they don’t really care that much about it as long as you’re getting them the results they want. I wanted more, I craved collaboration with micro clients, small business owners. I also wanted to make a difference and be able to help smaller clients, but everyone was telling me, you can’t have a successful agency with small clients, you need to have big, large paying clients to be successful in this game.
So I did that.
And then I just got so burnt out, I was working really long hours and just hating it.
Then we came into 2020 and COVID happened. And my business didn’t slow down during COVID. If anything, it probably increased because businesses all of a sudden had time in their lives, and they wanted to work on their marketing. But what it did is, is it forced me to spend time thinking about whether I was really happy, was my business really fulfilling me, did this really bring me joy, was I living my dream life like I had left corporate to pursue? I was building something that was my own, which is what I wanted. But I wasn’t getting to serve the people I really wanted to serve. And I just had no balance in my life. I was working from when I woke up in the morning to when I went to bed late at night. And I wasn’t doing any of the things that I loved or fulfilled me and I wasn’t even doing the things I loved within my business either. So I got to that point where I was like, What the heck is this??!
There has to be a different way.
And so because we were in that C word year, I had this extra special time to work on my business and really go deep into what did my dream life did look like? If I could make my life look like anything? What would it look like?
Then I rebuilt my entire business completely from scratch.
I dismantled the entire thing, and then rebuilt it from the ground up.
And now I run a business that I absolutely adore.
I just have to be careful to schedule time in my life to do other things because I actually just love working my business so much because I’m getting to help the people I want to help getting served and the way I want to serve. I’m getting to work in the ways that make me feel most inspired and that really make me feel fulfilled and that is all I could have ever dreamed of.
Below are what I think is the most important things that I have worked on in my business to do this:
I worked out who I wanted serve
I spent a lot of time putting thought and energy into exactly who it was that I felt called to help with my business. And for me that really landed on Mums who are running businesses. Mums who are trying to juggle it all, who have generally created a business when they had kids so that they didn’t have to go back to corporate and wanted to scale their business so that they can spend more time with their family and really create the life that they desire for their family without having to do that at corporate by leaving their kids.
Then I worked out how to serve them the best
I really took the time to work out what their needs are in running their business? How can I best help fulfil their needs? How can I create products or services that are really going to help them with where they are in their business? What are their struggles? What are the things that hold them back? What are their blocks? What are the things that they might find difficult to navigate in growing their business? I did a lot of work on really defining those things so that I could work out how I could create programs that used my skill set to really could help them.
I looked at what I love
Then I looked at what it was that I really loved doing within my business. What were the tasks, the jobs, the services, projects, that I really loved. The ones that really lit my soul on fire and made me feel really inspired in my business. And for me, that was seeing clients have that, “oh my goodness, I get it now” moment. From doing that training, or watching that video, or reading that piece of content that I created and suddenly it clicks for them! I really wanted to empower small business owners to have that moment where suddenly their marketing makes sense. Because once it sinks in then do the work and take the action to grow your business.
Then the other thing I really love is strategy. I’m obsessed with strategy. I love anything about marketing strategy, business strategy about growth, sales, content, everything strategy. Strategy is my thing. It’s what I’m good at, I can sit down with a business owner for an hour, over a cup of coffee and pull apart their entire business and put together a strategy that will help them get from point A to point B. That’s what I thrive in. I love that side of it.
The other thing that I really love doing in my business is teaching, I love teaching, training, educating people on their marketing, I love just breaking down concepts and strategies for clients, for people that are watching my training, even on my social media. I love making things simplified and easy for you to find clarity in your business. Because when you get clarity, you get confidence!
Those are the things I worked out that I really loved about my business so then it was easy from there. I worked out; I’m going to teach small business owners who are Mums, how to grow their business with marketing strategies. That’s what I love, so I built my entire business around those things.
I created a strategy that worked for my personality
Then another thing that worked for me in changing my business from before to now, is I created a strategy that worked well for my personality. Content creation is one of the biggest strainers when it comes to your business, especially as a small business owner. And so it’s important to create a content strategy that works for your personality. So I worked out how to create content in a way that worked for me. I learnt how to create content smartly, how to reuse content and how to get the most out of the content I was creating.
I also learned how to use sales strategies to scale my business. I worked out what sales strategies worked for my audience, what connects the most with my audience, and then how to scale my business with the sales strategies that worked for my business.
I decided what was important in my lifestyle
I also learned how to use sales strategies to scale my business. I worked out what sales strategies worked for my audience, w
The other thing that really helped me was knowing what things in my lifestyle were important. The things in my day to day life that enable me to really love my life as I am living it. When your day to day is mundane, monotonous, boring activities it make it really hard to love the everyday. So for me, that looked like having a really good morning routine, spending quality time with my husband every morning and having space for exercise. I’m also an extrovert so I feel recharged when I spend time around people. So making sure to fill my schedule with coffees and lunches with friends and family and things on the weekend that I love to do. If you’re more introverted and you don’t love being around people alot, it might look like you’d love to go for walks with the dog, or sit and read a book on the weekend or in the afternoon.
When I fill my days and weeks with those sorts of things it really helps me to love my life and to avoid running into burnout and needing a holiday from my life.
Building my business around my family has been really important to me. I didn’t want to build a business that my life had to work around, I wanted to build a business where my business worked around my life. So I’ve set it up intentionally, so that I can do life the way I want to, with a young family, to be able to be present as Mum but also work hard in my business. I’ve been really intentional and set everything up for that. So that’s been really important to me, in getting ready to have this baby and getting ready to welcome him into our family. Those certain things are really important to me around how I wanted to be present for him, and for my family. And I needed my business to work around that.
So those are just some of my thoughts of things that have worked for me to build a business that I don’t need a holiday from. But I really encourage you to look at your business and think just because it looks like this right now doesn’t mean that’s the way it has to stay.
It does take sacrifice to create a business that works around your life. But if you’re willing to sacrifice and you’re willing to put in the work in the short term, it can really pay off in the long term.
If you’re at the point in your business where you can’t function like this any longer because burnout is too close, or you’re already living in the burnout right now, which is not nice at all. Because you can’t create your best work when you’re living in burnout. Then it’s time to start building a business that you don’t need a holiday from. That you love every day of being on the journey.
For me, it took time and sacrifice and a lot of love and energy poured into it and the strategic direction of knowing exactly what I was working towards and where I was going, but it was the most rewarding work I’ve ever done. And you can totally do it. I’m here, I’m in your corner, I’ve got your back 100% of the way.
If you want guidance in doing this for yourself, then head to my Academy, where I teach you how to do this with the strategic teaching and guidance.
Ams 🌻