March 31, 2020 • 47 mins
Emily recently hosted a Q&A session in the Being Boss Community, and now we're publishing her answers in a two-part series. In this first episode, Emily tackles navigating uneasy feelings around onboarding a contractor into your top-secret processes, how to overcome overwhelm as a multi-passionate and totally prolific creative, how to maintain company culture as a remote team, how to determine the most important metrics to track in your business, and how to cold call like a boss.
This episode is sponsored by Freshbooks Cloud Accounting and Acuity Scheduling.
Get full show notes for this episode here
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Emily Thompson (00:00):
How are you doing Boss, I know that many of
you are feeling an edge, an edgeto make the very most of this
downtime and to move yourbusiness along even if things
are feeling slow, to prepare forwhat I truly believe is going to
be a new economy, and to connectwith a community of business
owners who are figuring this outas we go. Well, the being boss
(00:21):
conference is now online, makingit accessible to every one of
you, no matter where you are.
And in light of world events,we're shifting our content in
ways that will make it mosthelpful to you now, focusing on
time management and marketing inthis new world of doing
business, keynotes, panels,breakout sessions, Live podcast
recordings, and more. Making upthree days of a virtual
(00:44):
conference for creative businessowners that is unlike anything
that's been done before. Sure,we won't be sipping Zaza Rex in
the French Quarter, not thistime, but you can wear your yoga
pants and still get insights andtactics from top creative
business owners, who are alsonavigating this disruptive
moment in history and connectwith creative business owners
(01:05):
from all over the world. Getyour virtual ticket and join in,
make the most of this time andfigure out how you and your
business are going to make itthrough to the other side at
better than before. Learn moreand join us at being boss club
slash conference. I'm EmilyThompson. And I'm Kathleen
(01:26):
Shannon. And this is being boss.
In this episode of being boss,join me as I do something
totally new here on this show.
Because if there's ever a timeto do something new, it's now am
I right? A few weeks ago, Ihopped on a call with the bosses
and the being boss community toanswer their questions in a q&a
(01:47):
session of epic proportions. Ispent an hour and a half
answering over a dozen questionsfrom a wide variety of creative
business owners, includingagency owners and designers and
illustrators and even anastrologer. We've taken these
questions and my life coachinganswers and created not one but
two episodes that we'll besharing here on being boss. This
(02:11):
is episode number one of thislittle series and today I'll be
sharing five questions that Idug in on with our community
bosses along with my answers.
Here's what we're diving intotoday. Navigating uneasy
feelings around onboarding acontractor into your top secret
processes, how to overcomeoverwhelm as a multi passionate
(02:33):
and totally prolific creativehow to maintain company culture
as a remote team how todetermine the most important
metrics to track in yourbusiness and how to cold call
like a boss. As always, you canfind all the tools books and
links we referenced on the shownotes at WWW dot being boss dot
club.
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Emily Thompson (03:58):
Okay to get this started, you should know that I
love some live q&a. I seriouslyfeel as if this is where I'm
most shine as a creativebusiness expert. So when it came
to brainstorming how it is thatI really wanted to put my
fingerprint on the being bosspodcast. This is what feels
really right to me. So figuredI'd give it a go. I'm super
(04:19):
excited to be chatting aboutbusiness and not only with any
old boss but the bosses and thebeing boss community. The group
that I talked to for this q&acall was filled with familiar
faces from folks that I've hungout with at vacations or spent a
lot of time with and mymasterminds and plenty of
business owners that I've gottento know in the community over
(04:40):
the last few months and totallyhope to meet in real life one
day. So let's get this partystarted. First up, we have a
question from Cali, a webdesigner and founder of June
mango design. Kelly asks, I'mbeginning to scale my web design
business by hiring some awesomedesign contractors. For upcoming
(05:00):
web projects, but I'm wonderinghow I protect my own web design
process which proprietary, ofcourse, an NDA, which is a non
disclosure agreement that willbe signed. But other than that
to how do I fully immerse acontractor and what's needed to
build a website in five days,without giving away the farm,
perhaps this is just the cost ofdoing business and scaling
(05:23):
things. Galli you're right costof doing business, you'd have to
trust other people to help yourun your business. So NDA is one
such tool that you can do tohelp mitigate some of the
thievery I suppose that couldhappen to you can also make them
sign a non compete and a lawyercan help you figure out exactly
(05:46):
what that needs to be, so thatthey're not going and doing the
same service for some period oftime while they're working with
you and post. But for the mostpart, you just need to let that
go and trust the process. Andalso trust that no one can do
what you do, and the way thatyou do it. Because we are all
(06:08):
unique snowflakes. And they havenot built the business that you
have built. Even if someonesteals it and tries to run away
and do it, they're not going toget the same results that you
do. They do not have the sameclient base that you have, you
are years and years ahead ofthem. But also, your web design
process isn't actuallyproprietary, not completely,
(06:31):
you're not creating a uniqueproduct. With a unique process,
you're building a website, whichanyone can do. And sure you do
it in a way that's very specialto how it is that you do it. But
I hear this often with peoplewho think we're the people who
think that they they haveproprietary things that are
(06:52):
really just things that anyonecan do, you're just the only one
currently doing them in thatway. And there is no real rate,
any real way to protect thingslike this, there are
proprietary, that words gonnakill me today, there are
proprietary processes, and thereare ways that you can protect
those things. But this is notreally one of those cases. This
(07:13):
is the case of you doing thingsin a special way and wanting to
protect them, were you wantingto protect it, but and you can,
but you also can't. And thatcan't part is doing business. So
I hope that helps, mostlycontinued on the path let it go.
Because every employee of everybusiness who's shown systems has
(07:37):
been shown quote unquote,proprietary or, oh my goodness,
that word is gonna kill meproprietary processes that they
can certainly take to anothersimilar business or to their own
business, and the world stillhas tons of businesses doing
cool things. So don't let thatstop you from growing your
business. Next up, we have aquestion from Kelly Manzano, a
(08:03):
mental health therapist andowner of summit health works.
Kelly asks, How do you maintainmultiple projects slash
businesses in a way that makesprogress towards goals and
doesn't feel scattered oroverwhelmed, I love the variety
of projects I have. But I feelthis organized and constantly
(08:23):
juggling help.
That is fact and in my years ofdoing more than one thing, I
always feel overwhelmed, orusually feel overwhelmed,
usually pretty scattered. Butthere are some ways to help you
out. One thing that I do is Itime block, which is something
(08:45):
we talk a lot about here and ifyou have not watched it yet I
have training on time blockingthat you can find at being boss
club slash time. And that is myfavorite way for creating some
structure around what I'mworking on when because being
proactive about your time is thebest way for you to be ahead of
(09:06):
the overwhelm. I like to thinkof blocking off entire days or
occasionally half days forspecific projects. So for me, I
juggle my time between beingboss and Almanac supply co Those
are my two businesses slashprojects that definitely can
feel a little overwhelming whenI'm thinking about all the
(09:27):
things that have to be happeningin each of them. But I find
great success and creatingblocks of time where I'm working
on one or the other. And thatstructure those boundaries
helped me stay focused on thething when I'm doing it and not
feeling overwhelmed by the otherone because it has its time that
(09:50):
will come. So I for being BostonAlmanac This is for the most
part half day block. So I willdo mornings for all my back. And
that's because I'm at theoffice, we have team meetings
every morning. And so that'sdedicated time for Almanac. So
usually between 9am and11 1130 12am, working on
(10:11):
Almanac. After that time, I'mdoing being boss. And that's
pretty much almost every day,occasionally I'll have a whole
day that's almanaque or a wholeday that's being boss. But that
ongoing structure helps meidentify or helps me keep
identified what my prioritiesare, and when so that's time
(10:33):
number one, too, is things likeseparate email accounts, and
separate Asana accounts. SoAsana is the project management
software that we use, I have twocompletely separate, I think
they're called workspaces andAsana for each business, or even
(10:53):
project sometimes a project willfall within one of those
businesses. So I actually havean upcoming project that I'm not
ready to talk about yet. Alwayshave something up my sleeve, I
have an upcoming project thathas its own project in the being
boss, there's little key there,Asana project, or workspace. And
(11:14):
so I use my project managementsoftware to divide or categorize
the things that I need to do sothat I can keep really focused
on one while I'm doing it or theother while I'm doing that one.
And I find that really helps alot. I will say one of the
things they do keep combined.
And this could cause someoverwhelm. But I don't find it
overwhelming personally, is itkeeping everything on a single
(11:36):
calendar. So instead of havingseparate calendars for
everything, I make everything,go to my being boss calendar,
whether it's Almanac orotherwise, that way, there's
less of a likelihood for me todouble booked myself. And I can
look at my time management interms of events, or travel that
I'm doing or markets that we'redoing for Almanac or whatever
(11:58):
it's all in the context of asingle calendar, because I'm
only one human, and I can onlyprocess off of one calendar. So
there's a couple of ways for youto divide and conquer, I think
is really the idea. Be reallyproactive about time management,
about time blocking, seeing whenand where you're going to be
(12:20):
focusing on which of thoseprojects, show up, do the work
as you're promising yourself,you're going to do it. And then
use your project managementsoftware to treat whatever it is
if it's a side hustle, if it'slike some other little project
that you're doing, treat it withas much importance as you would
everything else. If it's thatimportant to you. Oftentimes,
(12:41):
the overwhelm will keep you fromattacking the funding that you
want to do, or the side projectthat you're trying to launch or
that extra thing that you'retrying to get off the ground or
whatever it may be. Don't let itoverwhelm keep you from doing
it. Be proactive. Do the work.
(13:03):
Yes, Kelly says okay, timeblocking boundaries, project
management space, a calendar andtime management. Yep, all the
tools that you use to be boss.
And the one way use those toolsto be boss. And the second thing
that you're doing too,it can be very overwhelming to
split your brain between twothings, I often find that it can
(13:24):
take me up to up to half an hoursometimes to stop one project
and move to the next project. Ithink giving yourself buffer
space is really important too.
And really not bouncing back andforth. If I'm ever having a day
where I am bouncing back andforth from let's just say
(13:47):
writing social media posts forboth businesses, it is not going
to be a very productive day. AndI usually very quickly find
myself needing to stop, chooseone, do the thing, finish it
then move off, move to the nextone and giving myself that
buffer space in between. Whichis why I like those half days
(14:08):
because lunch is usually thatbuffer place like I can go have
lunch, go for a walk, dowhatever, come back, and my
brain is rage just jump into thenext thing. All right, Kelly
says Of course love. I noticedwhen I don't regroup using
priorities, then I'm busy butnot priority. not productive.
(14:30):
Agreed. You have to you have tolay out what's most important.
All right, and Caroline says yesto half days. I have so much
client days. At the moment, I'mworking full days when I have
the opportunity for half day Itend to be super productive.
Yes. And this tool can be verytrue for going from let's say
(14:54):
you're working in your businessto on your business. It doesn't
have to be two totally separateprojects or one client to the
next client, whenever your brainhas to shift gears from one big
task to the other, givingyourself one a good chunk of
time to really like dive in anddedicate yourself to the first
one, giving yourself buffer timeto like finish sort of
(15:17):
processing what you're workingon in your head. Starting over
with the next one is reallyimportant. But then also, yes,
just generally working halfdays, I often find that whenever
I'm doing very hardcore,especially creative work, or
just really deep work, I alsothink, think very hard about
spreadsheets in this place whereI'm creating a monster
(15:38):
spreadsheet for something I canI'm only productive for about
half a day after those firstfour hours or so are over and
nothing I do for the rest of dayis going to be any good. And the
being boss community, we oftendiscuss our favorite tools from
email marketing, doing surveys,scheduling software. If you've
(16:01):
been a podcast listener forreally any time at all, you know
that when it comes to schedulingup clients, business besties or
collaborators for meetings,check ins and even podcast
recordings. We rely on acuityscheduling, and a reason being
boss community thread one that Istayed out of for a while just
to see where the chips fell. Oneboss asked for a recommendation
(16:22):
between acuity scheduling and acompetitor. And of course, our
members started chiming andsharing their experience and
unsurprising to me acuityscheduling one out as the boss
preferred tool for automatedscheduling, acuity scheduling,
the scheduling assistant thatworks 24 seven behind the scenes
to fill your calendars, but youdon't have to, for a limited
(16:44):
time only you can get 45 days ofacuity scheduling absolutely
free. no credit card required bygoing to acuity scheduling.com
slash being boss. Okay, so nextquestion comes from Kim Tao. She
is the owner of SAS magazine, awomen's lifestyle magazine and
(17:05):
brand she asks, How do youmaintain your company culture
when having a remote slashvirtual office with employees in
different locations? This issuch a good question and super
relevant for so many situations.
Especially Kim, I know you arethinking about going from having
a physical office with youremployees and going remote, just
(17:28):
to see just to change things up.
And I'll show you even myexperience where I've done this
as well. I started actually Coryhere who's around, always
lurking Corey here. I hired himwhenever we had a physical
office space. And we worktogether in that physical office
(17:51):
space formaybe three years Are we
together around three years. Andthat space and the team grew
into I think five people at onepoint. At one point, whenever we
were doing websites, and thatwas in the space, too, we
actually had about 15 peoplebetween physical employees, some
local contractors, and thenremote contractors, as well. So
(18:13):
very familiar with growing smallculture, or small local culture.
And that culture even grewbeyond our team. So some of
those local contractors wouldcome in and be hanging out with
us pretty constantly. And thenpeople who were not our vendors,
so not contractors, but we'refriends like business friends,
(18:35):
what can be a part of thatcompany culture is what was very
like, social community basedculture. If that doesn't sound
familiar eyes. I'm gonna tellyou right now, it's very much
being boss feely. So we had avery strong company culture, we
loved it, we had like thingsthat we would do. We have this
thing where every time we wouldclose a client, we'd all take a
shot. That was a lot of fun. Andsometimes we would get them
(18:59):
early. We have to wait to likeafter lunch to do that. Oh,
you're right, Cory. We used toplay darts. All the time. I do
miss playing darts a ton. Weused to go out for lunch every
Friday the entire team. So thereare things that you can do when
you were in physical spacetogether. That really is quite
special. And I did notanticipate how much our company
(19:20):
culture would change whenever wewent from being local all
together to being remote becausewhenever we did go remote, we
were not moving far apart, likeCory and I still live about two
hours apart. So it wasn't likewe were on the other side of the
country or anything like that.
(19:42):
But our company culturedefinitely shifted a lot and it
took us a long time to figureout one not even culture but
communications. We were so usedto distribute yelling across the
room when we needed something orlike we had a question or
whatever it was, so thatwhenever we all went off We kind
of struggled with this idea ofhow do we, how do we ask each
(20:04):
other questions? Or how do wesay that thing is done? What
does that look like. And that'sactually when we dove really
hardcore into using Asana, theproject management system that
we use. And when we startedusing Slack, which is the team
communication tool that we use,and I even remember, I had to
hire someone. So anorganization's specialists to
come in and help me figure outhow to figure out this
(20:28):
communication piece with theteam. So I had to bring in some
outside help to help me wrap myhead around it because I
couldn't quite figure out how todo it on my own. And from there,
we decided to do a couple ofthings such as having weekly
meetings. So now we meet everysingle week, on Tuesday mornings
for an hour to talk about allthe business stuff for the week,
(20:52):
behind and the week ahead, howto use Asana, and slack to
communicate and manage projectsand those sorts of things. And
we've had to come up with someinteresting ways to keep company
culture going. Some thingsaround like sharing Jeff's in
Slack, which I feel like I couldbe better at doing that. Cobra
(21:14):
is always really great atsharing some good gifts. Or,
honestly, our being bossvacations has kind of turned
into one of our company culturenurturing things that we do
every year, as we all show up.
There's always some, some teamdinners that are happening, we
all love putting that togetherand doing it, whether it's the
vacations or the upcomingconference, like there is
something going on behind thescenes with the being boss team
(21:37):
that you guys don't even seethat's like this whole other
part and purpose that we createthis event also for ourselves so
that we can get together andhang out to everything. Another
thing that Cory and I have alsostarted doing recently as Cory
is coming into town once amonth, so that we can maintain
that in person company culture.
(21:59):
Though, I guess we need to putthat dartboard up in the new
office. Cory says, but I'm stillmad that we don't get to play
darts anymore, you should behappy because if you remember, I
won.
We kept cumulative scores, and Iwill never forget that I was
shut down as me The winner isthe winner. So I agree there are
there are things that are notthe same and will not be the
(22:23):
same. When you take your teamfrom remote or from in person
local into remote workspace.
It's a lot harder, I think, toallow people or to facilitate
those. Those relationships andnurture the connections that you
have with your teammates has tobe significantly more
(22:45):
intentional, as opposed toshowing up and like hanging out
all day every day. But I thinkit's possible. And I think the
key is to find the pieces ofyour company culture that are
most important to not only you,but also each of your employees,
and each of your employees willbe different. One of the ways
that we did this sort of earlyon, I think this was maybe about
(23:08):
a year after we went remote is Imade everyone on the team do the
love languages test to find outwhat their love language was, so
that I can be sure that I wasnurturing those relationships
and the way that they mostneeded them nurtured. So there
are things like that that youcan do again, you have to be
very intentional so that you areshowing up for your team, and
(23:30):
more thoughtful ways than youwere doing when you were just
all in the same office together.
Home Cory says that he and Davidlet me win that sweet that you
think so. Rachel says I lovekeeping track and acknowledging
(23:51):
slash checking in on team memberbirthdays and their partners,
kids etc. Personal little thingscompletely agree with that
Rachel. And lucky Cory is atlike summer solstice baby, which
makes that very easy for me. SoCory, thank your mom for having
you on the summer solstice. AndRachel also says that we just
(24:14):
did love languages last week asa remote team. I think that
though that love language testis one of my favorite ones for
communicating effectively interms of nurture nurturing
relationships with your team,especially if you are remote. So
hope that helps. Kim in terms ofthat question, because it's
(24:34):
difficult. I think it'sdefinitely I think it's harder.
It's definitely harder to dothat with a remote team.
Especially if you are in manydifferent places. I'm also
lucky, you know, Cory is closeenough to me as well that
whenever we are actuallytraveling to where our parents
live, Korea is in the middle. Sosometimes we can stop in and
have lunch or dinner with himbecause there's little things
(24:56):
like that that are helpful withhim being nearby and Kim, it's
possible, I think that everyonewill be staying local. So you
guys can still get togetherevery week for dinner or
whatever it may be, in order tocontinue nurturing those
relationships, but the work doeschange. So just be very mindful
of what parts of that you wantto keep what parts your
(25:16):
employees really find beneficialand valuable. And work on those
communication pieces. Becausethe communication will be
different from local to remoteoffice situations. I will also
say to you and I actually saythis, I think in an upcoming
episode of making a business, Ithink it's the next one, I've
(25:38):
already recorded. The next one,I talked about this a little
bit. So if this is repetitivefor anyone who listens to that
in the future, you'll get overit, and it'll be fine. But one
of the things that I note inthere is that this company
culture piece is it is the heartand soul of your business. And
especially for the kinds ofbusinesses that we build. It's
(26:01):
not a part of your business thatyour customers ever really see.
So for example, you guys don'treally see the company culture
that being boss has, you do alittle bit and you probably have
some Inklings, but you don'tlike you don't know what it's
like, whenever we're all hangingout together. Or especially when
we're having our team dinners inNew Orleans, it's separate from
(26:24):
all of all of the all of theattendees, or, or even like
what's happening at Almanac,like I am working in the same
office space with Almanac everysingle day. And yet that it is
the heart and soul of ourcompany, what you guys see on
the outside the website, and thesocial media, even the packages
(26:45):
that you have arrive at yourdoorstep, whatever it may be.
That's just like a weirdoffshoot of what our company
actually is. And I think that'ssuch a fascinating idea that
that really the job of the CEOof a company is about keeping
the members of that companyhappy and healthy and productive
(27:08):
and moving forward with thevision.
And the objectives and all thosethings like that is the heart
and soul what you guys see whatthe customers and consumers see
is just like, almost anafterthought. And a lot of ways
I think that's very, veryfascinating. So just gonna throw
that in there as well. Oh, man,such good questions from the
(27:29):
bosses in the being bosscommunity. I love how they show
up and don't hold back askingreally great questions that are
really about doing business andno fluffy stuff here. If you're
enjoying this episode, then youshould know that I have
something fun up my sleeves. OnApril 6, I'm rebooting 10
minutes to being boss, a weeklybite sized show for creative
(27:51):
business owners where I'manswering questions from bosses
like you giving actionableinsights, tools and tactics and
around 10 minutes, you cansearch for 10 minutes to be
involved wherever you listen topodcasts, and subscribe now. And
we'll have not one but three newepisodes dropping on April 6.
(28:13):
All right. Now we have anotherquestion from Kim. How do you
determine the best KPIs which iskey performance indicator for
your business growth slashrevenue? There are so many
different things to track, howdo you determine which ones are
the most important, especiallyif you have multiple revenue
streams. There are so manythings you can track. But every
(28:37):
business is different, like eventwo businesses in the exact same
field can have completelydifferent metrics that they are
tracking. And this isfascinating to me. And the
metrics that you are trackingsays so much about what you find
(28:58):
important in your business. Andit even affects how it is that
you are catering to yourcustomers or clients. So this is
an important piece. And itreally just comes down to what
is most important for you. Andthat's there is like a right or
wrong answer. So for example, ifyour KPI is Instagram followers,
(29:27):
like is that really the mostimportant metric in your
business? Um, there are certainbusinesses where it could be for
sure, but that's usually avanity metric. And so you have
to stay away from vanity metricsfor your KPIs. As much as pap as
(29:48):
much as possible. So you canthink of vanity metrics as the
metrics that make you feel goodbut don't actually mean anything
for your business. yourInstagram followers and 99.9% of
businesses out there is oneThere's metrics, where I have
certainly seen people with100,000 followers who are so
broke and can't convert a singleone of them. Likewise, I've seen
(30:11):
instead or Instagram accountswith 500 followers, and the
person who runs it is living afine life, making as much money
as they need from those 500followers and whatever's
happening outside of Instagram,making Instagram kind of a
useless metric for 99.9% ofbusinesses. So you need to think
(30:36):
about what metrics in yourbusiness one that you care
about? And to actually matter.
How about that. So you can thinkI think every business, it is
actually the definition ofbusiness, that you are watching
your profit margins. So revenue,yes, profit margins, yes, times
two. And I say definition ofbusiness, because that's why
(30:59):
you're in business, it's to makemoney. If you weren't here to
make money, you'd have anonprofit, and you wouldn't be
caring about making money, youjust be doing good work. That's
there's a fuzzy line aroundthat. So is what it is. But you
need to be tracking revenue, andprofit. And then think about
what other metrics are importantto you. So Kim, I know that you
(31:20):
run a design agency. So maybefor you is revenue and profit,
in addition to you know, clientsclosed,
every quarter, that can be agood sort of sr, metric to that
revenue and profit point. Youcan also think about things like
(31:43):
website traffic, so is youronline marketing, actually
converting into website trafficthat would then potentially
convert into new clients. Sowebsite traffic can be a really
good one. website traffic canactually be in a couple of
different places, too, you cando just like sheer pageviews,
you could do. I always love agood bounce rate. And your
(32:04):
bounce rate being the rate atwhich someone enters into your
website and then bounces rightback without visiting more than
one page, you want your bouncerate to be low. So it's one of
those metrics, you actually wantthat number to be as low as
possible. And that's a metric ofhow interesting engaging your
website is? Or are you gettingthe right people to your
website. You can also thinkabout things like, you know, for
(32:28):
me, it's podcast downloads, Coryactually creates, sort of
gathers all of our metrics forall of my KPIs every week, and
then month, and puts them in aset of spreadsheets and then
loads them into slack. So that Ihave, I have a dashboard that I
can look at every single week,that shows me what all of my
(32:51):
most important metrics are. AndI'll even pull it open. Let me
show you what my metrics are. Soat the moment, one of them has
conference ticket sales. Andthat's the thing too is your
metrics can change depending onthe season of business that
you're in. I'm currently in likea conference ticket sales
season. And so conference ticketsales is a metric that I want an
update on every single week.
Another one that we have, is theweekly community member count.
(33:16):
Has it gone up? Has it gonedown? Is it the same, just
generally not engagement, notlike how many people are posting
none of those things, I can gocheck that out if I want to. But
in terms of this dashboard, myKPI is number of community
members. And then we also have aweekly podcast stats spreadsheet
that he goes into every week,and lets us in puts in there how
(33:38):
many episodes or how manydownloads we've had in the past
seven days, past 30 days andpast 90 days, I believe, as well
as total downloads, so we cansee the rate at which the
website is growing. And what doyou also put what, like you also
often tell us what podcasts aredoing the best. So if anything
(34:03):
has changed in our top 10episodes, Cory will also update
us on that. So it's a it's kindof getting long and rambly. And
I get really excited abouttracking metrics, but just
choose the ones that are mostimportant for you. And are
actually metrics of growth andsuccess. They are different for
(34:23):
literally every single business.
And we'll say a lot about whatkind of business you're running
and what is most important toyou. So a little example of this
is like the smallest littlemindset shift. But I think
you'll see why it's important isyou could track how many clients
(34:46):
you close in a quarter. Or youcould track how many websites
you launch in a quarter. Sothink about the difference
between tracking clients gainedand tracking clients completely.
He did. kind of similar, butkind of a world of difference.
That one little difference cansay a lot about what kind of
(35:08):
company you are trying to
Unknown (35:12):
grow.
Emily Thompson (35:15):
Just that little bitty shift. Okay, have some
comments over here. Colleensays, I use the track your
metrics worksheet from beingboss isn't a good one. To track
several things throughout theyear, monthly profit loss, cash
summary and clients I worked onlists, subscribers and tracked
hours. Those are some good onesColeen, I seriously can't live
(35:38):
without it on my wall as anoverall metrics view each day.
That is wonderful. It's reallyhelpful to see trends year to
year as well completely agree.
That's one of my favorite thingsabout having things loaded up in
spreadsheets, especially, butalso in worksheets. And we've
talked about that around CEOday, or the CEO day kit, there's
(35:58):
sort of magic to having theseworksheets filled out every
single year. So you can go seewhat growth is like year to
year. So I love that. And Kimsays thanks, definitely love the
little mindset shift ontracking, right? It can be
whatever you want it to be, butbe thoughtful about it and then
track it. So we literally havewhat's the word I'm looking for
(36:21):
repeating, we literally havesort of repeating to dues and
Asana so that every week, Coryis tasked with gathering this
information and sharing it withme, you can do this yourself.
I'm also tasked with ever beingto do to actually review it, so
that I remember to look at itevery week as well. But you can
use your project managementsoftware to prompt you to gather
(36:44):
this information. And it can beas easy to as just logging in
and looking at your websitestats. It's really important to
be able to gather a bird's eyeview quickly so that you can
make decisions, either on thefly or gather information to
make more thoughtful decisionsas needed. Next up, we have a
question from StephaniePeterson, I'd love to hear your
(37:11):
thoughts on coldish outreach togenerate new business referrals
have been huge for me, but Ineed to bring in some new
customers as well. I am a fan ofdoing cold outreach, with the
right intention andexpectations. How about that,
(37:34):
because it's going to be very,very different. So let's start
with intentions. Whenever you'redoing cold outreach, the first
thing that you should want to dois not to sell, but to help. And
that's kind of the same thing ifyou do the selling, right. Good
helping will lead into selling,but you want to form a
(37:58):
relationship, nurture arelationship and then sell. So
the intention is not to likejust convert someone
immediately, because that'sprobably not going to happen.
The only time that ever reallyhappens is if one, they're like
you are a gift from theuniverse, if you landed in their
inbox on the day that they weretelling their business partner
that all they needed withsomeone like you, then like,
(38:18):
yeah, you're going to convertthem. And that's going to be
amazing. That doesn't happensuper often. or two, they've
actually already seen your stuffelsewhere. So but that's not
even cold, you just you coldpitch, but you're actually kind
of maybe a little warm to them.
Um, so only really in those twocases, are you ever going to
immediately convert a coldpitch. There are probably other
(38:41):
cases too. But those are reallythe only two. So you have to go
into it with the idea that youwere actually there to form and
nurture a relationship based onanything, all kinds of things.
It could be anything I actuallywas doing. I had a girl in a
mastermind, this last round thatI did, and she wanted to work
(39:04):
with organizations that had todo with animals, and
specifically horses shows shewas a web developer and wanted
to do web development projectswith equestrian clubs, let's say
let's get it pretty narrow. Andso she was going to start doing
called pitching to theseequestrian clubs. And it wasn't
(39:26):
a matter of her going in andsaying you have a crappy
website. I'm making a new one.
It's more like You know what, Ilove horses and I'm so grateful
that there are companies in theworld that are doing things like
you are beginning a conversationnot about websites, not about
bettering your business, notabout any of those things, but a
mutual love of horses and it's areally great example of how you
can go in to form a relationshipbased on basically anything and
(39:49):
then see where the conversationgoes. You can direct it as
needed, and then
Unknown (39:57):
pitch
Emily Thompson (39:58):
so intention, you're going to help first form
relationship and then sellsecond expectations, you have to
go into a very clearexpectations. And here are a
couple that I think you shouldadopt
Unknown (40:14):
one.
Emily Thompson (40:16):
One out of 25 cold pitches will get a reply.
Sometimes it's more, sometimesit's less, you're not going to
have even half of the people youcalled pitch to reply back to
you. Most likely, unless it isthe most aligned and beautiful
thing for so many people. Sodon't get disheartened when you
(40:38):
get 24 nose or 24 crickets. Andone No, thank you. Because
that's maybe that one reply thatyou get. And then you get back
up and yeah, keep doing it. Sothat's an expectation, too, it's
probably going to take more thanone email. Whenever I'm cold
(40:58):
pitching. I don't do this veryoften. But I definitely do. I've
recently went through a round ofcold pitching for brands for the
being boss conference for brandpartnerships and sponsorships.
And even if I don't hearsomething from someone, I'll
email them two or three timesbefore I sort of put it in the
(41:18):
pile of this isn't happeningright now. So it becomes a thing
where you have to not only coldpitch them one time, but
multiple times. And another oneis get ready to one here knows
to babies but threes. I've heardof people getting some nasty
emails from some cold pitches.
So you can't go into coldbudging, being like faint of
(41:40):
heart, or being easily havingyour ego easily bruised, or
whatever it may be. You have toyou have to go into it as you
just landed in somebody's inboxasking some weird questions and
they are probably busy or don'tcare or just deleted it or you
probably just landed in junk andnever actually made it to their
(42:02):
inbox anyway. So intention,expectations. But it also
totally think that you should doit. Because I have gotten some
really great connections fromactually is even like an
expectation piece. You may notactually get out of a
relationship, what you want tolike what you go in there to
(42:22):
get. So you may go in therewanting to book a new client.
But what you may get is a newbusiness partner, or they may
have a resource for some coolsunglasses that you've been
looking for. Or something likethat. It could be anything,
anything come out of actuallyeven tell you. I called pitch
(42:44):
Kathleen back in the day. Ithink one of the first emails I
ever sent her was as a webdesigner. She had gone freelance
now I was following her on herblog. I can't remember I think
maybe we had been instagrammingInstagram commenting or blog
commenting at this point. Somaybe this isn't completely cold
but even warm. I went into it Ishe was doing branding. I
(43:07):
offered her my web designservices, in case she ever
wanted to, you know, pass herweb design people off or work
with me to develop websites thatshe was designing or something
she's like, No, thanks. Notinterested. Look at us now. You
never ever know. Rachel saysyes. And always focus on there.
(43:28):
What's in it for me? Oh, what'sin it for me? As in what's in it
for them? Yes. Like make itabout what's in it for them? Not
what's in it for you? Stephaniesays awesome advice. Thank you
relationship building is huge.
Yes, it is. and Lindsey saysvery reassuring info on cold
calling. I think it's justsomething that you do sometimes.
(43:51):
And again, make it aboutbuilding relationship. Don't
even think about it as coldcalling. Think about it as like
reaching out to someone that youmay want to be friends with.
Business friends, it can bebusiness friends, that's fine.
But start there. I think you'llbe much happier with the
results. I do love some coldpitching. I like talk no who
(44:11):
likes who likes it? reallynobody.
Unknown (44:15):
No one likes it.
Emily Thompson (44:17):
But I do I do have plenty of stories of people
who have done cold pitching oflike, think about your hot shit
200 list. You make a list of 200people that you want to work
with or collaborate with orwhatever. We have a worksheet
for this, that we will stick inthe show notes. But you create
(44:39):
this lesson you start coldpitching and I've talked to many
bosses who have started doingthis hidden who either ended up
on that podcast that they wantedto be on or books that client
that they wanted to book orwhatever it may be cold pitching
can absolutely get you resultsif you're really in for it.
Right Caroline says oh hacia 205forgotten how good a resource
(45:01):
that is. I literally picked upthe hot sheet 200 list and did
it again for myself. Four weeksago, something like that. It's
still a tool that I use. It'svery, it's very important to sit
down. Sometimes you just thinklike, Where do I want to go
next? Who do I want tocollaborate with next? Who are
those dream clients that I wantwant to work with next? There's
just something aboutenergetically going for that
(45:22):
next thing, thinking aboutwhat's next that like, takes you
there. Okay, so if you're a bosslistening to this and you're
feeling like you totally want tobe having creative business jobs
like this, or have a safe placeto ask these kinds of business
questions, then come check outour online community at being
boss to being boss community isfilled with thoughtful
(45:44):
questions, helpful bosses andplenty of resources to help you
in your business. You can learnmore and come check us out at
being boss club slash community.
Thanks for listening. And hey,if you want more resources,
we're talking worksheets, freetrainings in person meetups and
vacations and more. Go to ourwebsite at www dot beam boss dot
class. Do the work be boss
How are you doing Boss, I know that many of
you are feeling an edge, an edgeto make the very most of this
downtime and to move yourbusiness along even if things
are feeling slow, to prepare forwhat I truly believe is going to
be a new economy, and to connectwith a community of business
owners who are figuring this outas we go. Well, the being boss
(00:21):
conference is now online, makingit accessible to every one of
you, no matter where you are.
And in light of world events,we're shifting our content in
ways that will make it mosthelpful to you now, focusing on
time management and marketing inthis new world of doing
business, keynotes, panels,breakout sessions, Live podcast
recordings, and more. Making upthree days of a virtual
(00:44):
conference for creative businessowners that is unlike anything
that's been done before. Sure,we won't be sipping Zaza Rex in
the French Quarter, not thistime, but you can wear your yoga
pants and still get insights andtactics from top creative
business owners, who are alsonavigating this disruptive
moment in history and connectwith creative business owners
(01:05):
from all over the world. Getyour virtual ticket and join in,
make the most of this time andfigure out how you and your
business are going to make itthrough to the other side at
better than before. Learn moreand join us at being boss club
slash conference. I'm EmilyThompson. And I'm Kathleen
(01:26):
Shannon. And this is being boss.
In this episode of being boss,join me as I do something
totally new here on this show.
Because if there's ever a timeto do something new, it's now am
I right? A few weeks ago, Ihopped on a call with the bosses
and the being boss community toanswer their questions in a q&a
(01:47):
session of epic proportions. Ispent an hour and a half
answering over a dozen questionsfrom a wide variety of creative
business owners, includingagency owners and designers and
illustrators and even anastrologer. We've taken these
questions and my life coachinganswers and created not one but
two episodes that we'll besharing here on being boss. This
(02:11):
is episode number one of thislittle series and today I'll be
sharing five questions that Idug in on with our community
bosses along with my answers.
Here's what we're diving intotoday. Navigating uneasy
feelings around onboarding acontractor into your top secret
processes, how to overcomeoverwhelm as a multi passionate
(02:33):
and totally prolific creativehow to maintain company culture
as a remote team how todetermine the most important
metrics to track in yourbusiness and how to cold call
like a boss. As always, you canfind all the tools books and
links we referenced on the shownotes at WWW dot being boss dot
club.
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Emily Thompson (03:58):
Okay to get this started, you should know that I
love some live q&a. I seriouslyfeel as if this is where I'm
most shine as a creativebusiness expert. So when it came
to brainstorming how it is thatI really wanted to put my
fingerprint on the being bosspodcast. This is what feels
really right to me. So figuredI'd give it a go. I'm super
(04:19):
excited to be chatting aboutbusiness and not only with any
old boss but the bosses and thebeing boss community. The group
that I talked to for this q&acall was filled with familiar
faces from folks that I've hungout with at vacations or spent a
lot of time with and mymasterminds and plenty of
business owners that I've gottento know in the community over
(04:40):
the last few months and totallyhope to meet in real life one
day. So let's get this partystarted. First up, we have a
question from Cali, a webdesigner and founder of June
mango design. Kelly asks, I'mbeginning to scale my web design
business by hiring some awesomedesign contractors. For upcoming
(05:00):
web projects, but I'm wonderinghow I protect my own web design
process which proprietary, ofcourse, an NDA, which is a non
disclosure agreement that willbe signed. But other than that
to how do I fully immerse acontractor and what's needed to
build a website in five days,without giving away the farm,
perhaps this is just the cost ofdoing business and scaling
(05:23):
things. Galli you're right costof doing business, you'd have to
trust other people to help yourun your business. So NDA is one
such tool that you can do tohelp mitigate some of the
thievery I suppose that couldhappen to you can also make them
sign a non compete and a lawyercan help you figure out exactly
(05:46):
what that needs to be, so thatthey're not going and doing the
same service for some period oftime while they're working with
you and post. But for the mostpart, you just need to let that
go and trust the process. Andalso trust that no one can do
what you do, and the way thatyou do it. Because we are all
(06:08):
unique snowflakes. And they havenot built the business that you
have built. Even if someonesteals it and tries to run away
and do it, they're not going toget the same results that you
do. They do not have the sameclient base that you have, you
are years and years ahead ofthem. But also, your web design
process isn't actuallyproprietary, not completely,
(06:31):
you're not creating a uniqueproduct. With a unique process,
you're building a website, whichanyone can do. And sure you do
it in a way that's very specialto how it is that you do it. But
I hear this often with peoplewho think we're the people who
think that they they haveproprietary things that are
(06:52):
really just things that anyonecan do, you're just the only one
currently doing them in thatway. And there is no real rate,
any real way to protect thingslike this, there are
proprietary, that words gonnakill me today, there are
proprietary processes, and thereare ways that you can protect
those things. But this is notreally one of those cases. This
(07:13):
is the case of you doing thingsin a special way and wanting to
protect them, were you wantingto protect it, but and you can,
but you also can't. And thatcan't part is doing business. So
I hope that helps, mostlycontinued on the path let it go.
Because every employee of everybusiness who's shown systems has
(07:37):
been shown quote unquote,proprietary or, oh my goodness,
that word is gonna kill meproprietary processes that they
can certainly take to anothersimilar business or to their own
business, and the world stillhas tons of businesses doing
cool things. So don't let thatstop you from growing your
business. Next up, we have aquestion from Kelly Manzano, a
(08:03):
mental health therapist andowner of summit health works.
Kelly asks, How do you maintainmultiple projects slash
businesses in a way that makesprogress towards goals and
doesn't feel scattered oroverwhelmed, I love the variety
of projects I have. But I feelthis organized and constantly
(08:23):
juggling help.
That is fact and in my years ofdoing more than one thing, I
always feel overwhelmed, orusually feel overwhelmed,
usually pretty scattered. Butthere are some ways to help you
out. One thing that I do is Itime block, which is something
(08:45):
we talk a lot about here and ifyou have not watched it yet I
have training on time blockingthat you can find at being boss
club slash time. And that is myfavorite way for creating some
structure around what I'mworking on when because being
proactive about your time is thebest way for you to be ahead of
(09:06):
the overwhelm. I like to thinkof blocking off entire days or
occasionally half days forspecific projects. So for me, I
juggle my time between beingboss and Almanac supply co Those
are my two businesses slashprojects that definitely can
feel a little overwhelming whenI'm thinking about all the
(09:27):
things that have to be happeningin each of them. But I find
great success and creatingblocks of time where I'm working
on one or the other. And thatstructure those boundaries
helped me stay focused on thething when I'm doing it and not
feeling overwhelmed by the otherone because it has its time that
(09:50):
will come. So I for being BostonAlmanac This is for the most
part half day block. So I willdo mornings for all my back. And
that's because I'm at theoffice, we have team meetings
every morning. And so that'sdedicated time for Almanac. So
usually between 9am and11 1130 12am, working on
(10:11):
Almanac. After that time, I'mdoing being boss. And that's
pretty much almost every day,occasionally I'll have a whole
day that's almanaque or a wholeday that's being boss. But that
ongoing structure helps meidentify or helps me keep
identified what my prioritiesare, and when so that's time
(10:33):
number one, too, is things likeseparate email accounts, and
separate Asana accounts. SoAsana is the project management
software that we use, I have twocompletely separate, I think
they're called workspaces andAsana for each business, or even
(10:53):
project sometimes a project willfall within one of those
businesses. So I actually havean upcoming project that I'm not
ready to talk about yet. Alwayshave something up my sleeve, I
have an upcoming project thathas its own project in the being
boss, there's little key there,Asana project, or workspace. And
(11:14):
so I use my project managementsoftware to divide or categorize
the things that I need to do sothat I can keep really focused
on one while I'm doing it or theother while I'm doing that one.
And I find that really helps alot. I will say one of the
things they do keep combined.
And this could cause someoverwhelm. But I don't find it
overwhelming personally, is itkeeping everything on a single
(11:36):
calendar. So instead of havingseparate calendars for
everything, I make everything,go to my being boss calendar,
whether it's Almanac orotherwise, that way, there's
less of a likelihood for me todouble booked myself. And I can
look at my time management interms of events, or travel that
I'm doing or markets that we'redoing for Almanac or whatever
(11:58):
it's all in the context of asingle calendar, because I'm
only one human, and I can onlyprocess off of one calendar. So
there's a couple of ways for youto divide and conquer, I think
is really the idea. Be reallyproactive about time management,
about time blocking, seeing whenand where you're going to be
(12:20):
focusing on which of thoseprojects, show up, do the work
as you're promising yourself,you're going to do it. And then
use your project managementsoftware to treat whatever it is
if it's a side hustle, if it'slike some other little project
that you're doing, treat it withas much importance as you would
everything else. If it's thatimportant to you. Oftentimes,
(12:41):
the overwhelm will keep you fromattacking the funding that you
want to do, or the side projectthat you're trying to launch or
that extra thing that you'retrying to get off the ground or
whatever it may be. Don't let itoverwhelm keep you from doing
it. Be proactive. Do the work.
(13:03):
Yes, Kelly says okay, timeblocking boundaries, project
management space, a calendar andtime management. Yep, all the
tools that you use to be boss.
And the one way use those toolsto be boss. And the second thing
that you're doing too,it can be very overwhelming to
split your brain between twothings, I often find that it can
(13:24):
take me up to up to half an hoursometimes to stop one project
and move to the next project. Ithink giving yourself buffer
space is really important too.
And really not bouncing back andforth. If I'm ever having a day
where I am bouncing back andforth from let's just say
(13:47):
writing social media posts forboth businesses, it is not going
to be a very productive day. AndI usually very quickly find
myself needing to stop, chooseone, do the thing, finish it
then move off, move to the nextone and giving myself that
buffer space in between. Whichis why I like those half days
(14:08):
because lunch is usually thatbuffer place like I can go have
lunch, go for a walk, dowhatever, come back, and my
brain is rage just jump into thenext thing. All right, Kelly
says Of course love. I noticedwhen I don't regroup using
priorities, then I'm busy butnot priority. not productive.
(14:30):
Agreed. You have to you have tolay out what's most important.
All right, and Caroline says yesto half days. I have so much
client days. At the moment, I'mworking full days when I have
the opportunity for half day Itend to be super productive.
Yes. And this tool can be verytrue for going from let's say
(14:54):
you're working in your businessto on your business. It doesn't
have to be two totally separateprojects or one client to the
next client, whenever your brainhas to shift gears from one big
task to the other, givingyourself one a good chunk of
time to really like dive in anddedicate yourself to the first
one, giving yourself buffer timeto like finish sort of
(15:17):
processing what you're workingon in your head. Starting over
with the next one is reallyimportant. But then also, yes,
just generally working halfdays, I often find that whenever
I'm doing very hardcore,especially creative work, or
just really deep work, I alsothink, think very hard about
spreadsheets in this place whereI'm creating a monster
(15:38):
spreadsheet for something I canI'm only productive for about
half a day after those firstfour hours or so are over and
nothing I do for the rest of dayis going to be any good. And the
being boss community, we oftendiscuss our favorite tools from
email marketing, doing surveys,scheduling software. If you've
(16:01):
been a podcast listener forreally any time at all, you know
that when it comes to schedulingup clients, business besties or
collaborators for meetings,check ins and even podcast
recordings. We rely on acuityscheduling, and a reason being
boss community thread one that Istayed out of for a while just
to see where the chips fell. Oneboss asked for a recommendation
(16:22):
between acuity scheduling and acompetitor. And of course, our
members started chiming andsharing their experience and
unsurprising to me acuityscheduling one out as the boss
preferred tool for automatedscheduling, acuity scheduling,
the scheduling assistant thatworks 24 seven behind the scenes
to fill your calendars, but youdon't have to, for a limited
(16:44):
time only you can get 45 days ofacuity scheduling absolutely
free. no credit card required bygoing to acuity scheduling.com
slash being boss. Okay, so nextquestion comes from Kim Tao. She
is the owner of SAS magazine, awomen's lifestyle magazine and
(17:05):
brand she asks, How do youmaintain your company culture
when having a remote slashvirtual office with employees in
different locations? This issuch a good question and super
relevant for so many situations.
Especially Kim, I know you arethinking about going from having
a physical office with youremployees and going remote, just
(17:28):
to see just to change things up.
And I'll show you even myexperience where I've done this
as well. I started actually Coryhere who's around, always
lurking Corey here. I hired himwhenever we had a physical
office space. And we worktogether in that physical office
(17:51):
space formaybe three years Are we
together around three years. Andthat space and the team grew
into I think five people at onepoint. At one point, whenever we
were doing websites, and thatwas in the space, too, we
actually had about 15 peoplebetween physical employees, some
local contractors, and thenremote contractors, as well. So
(18:13):
very familiar with growing smallculture, or small local culture.
And that culture even grewbeyond our team. So some of
those local contractors wouldcome in and be hanging out with
us pretty constantly. And thenpeople who were not our vendors,
so not contractors, but we'refriends like business friends,
(18:35):
what can be a part of thatcompany culture is what was very
like, social community basedculture. If that doesn't sound
familiar eyes. I'm gonna tellyou right now, it's very much
being boss feely. So we had avery strong company culture, we
loved it, we had like thingsthat we would do. We have this
thing where every time we wouldclose a client, we'd all take a
shot. That was a lot of fun. Andsometimes we would get them
(18:59):
early. We have to wait to likeafter lunch to do that. Oh,
you're right, Cory. We used toplay darts. All the time. I do
miss playing darts a ton. Weused to go out for lunch every
Friday the entire team. So thereare things that you can do when
you were in physical spacetogether. That really is quite
special. And I did notanticipate how much our company
(19:20):
culture would change whenever wewent from being local all
together to being remote becausewhenever we did go remote, we
were not moving far apart, likeCory and I still live about two
hours apart. So it wasn't likewe were on the other side of the
country or anything like that.
(19:42):
But our company culturedefinitely shifted a lot and it
took us a long time to figureout one not even culture but
communications. We were so usedto distribute yelling across the
room when we needed something orlike we had a question or
whatever it was, so thatwhenever we all went off We kind
of struggled with this idea ofhow do we, how do we ask each
(20:04):
other questions? Or how do wesay that thing is done? What
does that look like. And that'sactually when we dove really
hardcore into using Asana, theproject management system that
we use. And when we startedusing Slack, which is the team
communication tool that we use,and I even remember, I had to
hire someone. So anorganization's specialists to
come in and help me figure outhow to figure out this
(20:28):
communication piece with theteam. So I had to bring in some
outside help to help me wrap myhead around it because I
couldn't quite figure out how todo it on my own. And from there,
we decided to do a couple ofthings such as having weekly
meetings. So now we meet everysingle week, on Tuesday mornings
for an hour to talk about allthe business stuff for the week,
(20:52):
behind and the week ahead, howto use Asana, and slack to
communicate and manage projectsand those sorts of things. And
we've had to come up with someinteresting ways to keep company
culture going. Some thingsaround like sharing Jeff's in
Slack, which I feel like I couldbe better at doing that. Cobra
(21:14):
is always really great atsharing some good gifts. Or,
honestly, our being bossvacations has kind of turned
into one of our company culturenurturing things that we do
every year, as we all show up.
There's always some, some teamdinners that are happening, we
all love putting that togetherand doing it, whether it's the
vacations or the upcomingconference, like there is
something going on behind thescenes with the being boss team
(21:37):
that you guys don't even seethat's like this whole other
part and purpose that we createthis event also for ourselves so
that we can get together andhang out to everything. Another
thing that Cory and I have alsostarted doing recently as Cory
is coming into town once amonth, so that we can maintain
that in person company culture.
(21:59):
Though, I guess we need to putthat dartboard up in the new
office. Cory says, but I'm stillmad that we don't get to play
darts anymore, you should behappy because if you remember, I
won.
We kept cumulative scores, and Iwill never forget that I was
shut down as me The winner isthe winner. So I agree there are
there are things that are notthe same and will not be the
(22:23):
same. When you take your teamfrom remote or from in person
local into remote workspace.
It's a lot harder, I think, toallow people or to facilitate
those. Those relationships andnurture the connections that you
have with your teammates has tobe significantly more
(22:45):
intentional, as opposed toshowing up and like hanging out
all day every day. But I thinkit's possible. And I think the
key is to find the pieces ofyour company culture that are
most important to not only you,but also each of your employees,
and each of your employees willbe different. One of the ways
that we did this sort of earlyon, I think this was maybe about
(23:08):
a year after we went remote is Imade everyone on the team do the
love languages test to find outwhat their love language was, so
that I can be sure that I wasnurturing those relationships
and the way that they mostneeded them nurtured. So there
are things like that that youcan do again, you have to be
very intentional so that you areshowing up for your team, and
(23:30):
more thoughtful ways than youwere doing when you were just
all in the same office together.
Home Cory says that he and Davidlet me win that sweet that you
think so. Rachel says I lovekeeping track and acknowledging
(23:51):
slash checking in on team memberbirthdays and their partners,
kids etc. Personal little thingscompletely agree with that
Rachel. And lucky Cory is atlike summer solstice baby, which
makes that very easy for me. SoCory, thank your mom for having
you on the summer solstice. AndRachel also says that we just
(24:14):
did love languages last week asa remote team. I think that
though that love language testis one of my favorite ones for
communicating effectively interms of nurture nurturing
relationships with your team,especially if you are remote. So
hope that helps. Kim in terms ofthat question, because it's
(24:34):
difficult. I think it'sdefinitely I think it's harder.
It's definitely harder to dothat with a remote team.
Especially if you are in manydifferent places. I'm also
lucky, you know, Cory is closeenough to me as well that
whenever we are actuallytraveling to where our parents
live, Korea is in the middle. Sosometimes we can stop in and
have lunch or dinner with himbecause there's little things
(24:56):
like that that are helpful withhim being nearby and Kim, it's
possible, I think that everyonewill be staying local. So you
guys can still get togetherevery week for dinner or
whatever it may be, in order tocontinue nurturing those
relationships, but the work doeschange. So just be very mindful
of what parts of that you wantto keep what parts your
(25:16):
employees really find beneficialand valuable. And work on those
communication pieces. Becausethe communication will be
different from local to remoteoffice situations. I will also
say to you and I actually saythis, I think in an upcoming
episode of making a business, Ithink it's the next one, I've
(25:38):
already recorded. The next one,I talked about this a little
bit. So if this is repetitivefor anyone who listens to that
in the future, you'll get overit, and it'll be fine. But one
of the things that I note inthere is that this company
culture piece is it is the heartand soul of your business. And
especially for the kinds ofbusinesses that we build. It's
(26:01):
not a part of your business thatyour customers ever really see.
So for example, you guys don'treally see the company culture
that being boss has, you do alittle bit and you probably have
some Inklings, but you don'tlike you don't know what it's
like, whenever we're all hangingout together. Or especially when
we're having our team dinners inNew Orleans, it's separate from
(26:24):
all of all of the all of theattendees, or, or even like
what's happening at Almanac,like I am working in the same
office space with Almanac everysingle day. And yet that it is
the heart and soul of ourcompany, what you guys see on
the outside the website, and thesocial media, even the packages
(26:45):
that you have arrive at yourdoorstep, whatever it may be.
That's just like a weirdoffshoot of what our company
actually is. And I think that'ssuch a fascinating idea that
that really the job of the CEOof a company is about keeping
the members of that companyhappy and healthy and productive
(27:08):
and moving forward with thevision.
And the objectives and all thosethings like that is the heart
and soul what you guys see whatthe customers and consumers see
is just like, almost anafterthought. And a lot of ways
I think that's very, veryfascinating. So just gonna throw
that in there as well. Oh, man,such good questions from the
(27:29):
bosses in the being bosscommunity. I love how they show
up and don't hold back askingreally great questions that are
really about doing business andno fluffy stuff here. If you're
enjoying this episode, then youshould know that I have
something fun up my sleeves. OnApril 6, I'm rebooting 10
minutes to being boss, a weeklybite sized show for creative
(27:51):
business owners where I'manswering questions from bosses
like you giving actionableinsights, tools and tactics and
around 10 minutes, you cansearch for 10 minutes to be
involved wherever you listen topodcasts, and subscribe now. And
we'll have not one but three newepisodes dropping on April 6.
(28:13):
All right. Now we have anotherquestion from Kim. How do you
determine the best KPIs which iskey performance indicator for
your business growth slashrevenue? There are so many
different things to track, howdo you determine which ones are
the most important, especiallyif you have multiple revenue
streams. There are so manythings you can track. But every
(28:37):
business is different, like eventwo businesses in the exact same
field can have completelydifferent metrics that they are
tracking. And this isfascinating to me. And the
metrics that you are trackingsays so much about what you find
(28:58):
important in your business. Andit even affects how it is that
you are catering to yourcustomers or clients. So this is
an important piece. And itreally just comes down to what
is most important for you. Andthat's there is like a right or
wrong answer. So for example, ifyour KPI is Instagram followers,
(29:27):
like is that really the mostimportant metric in your
business? Um, there are certainbusinesses where it could be for
sure, but that's usually avanity metric. And so you have
to stay away from vanity metricsfor your KPIs. As much as pap as
(29:48):
much as possible. So you canthink of vanity metrics as the
metrics that make you feel goodbut don't actually mean anything
for your business. yourInstagram followers and 99.9% of
businesses out there is oneThere's metrics, where I have
certainly seen people with100,000 followers who are so
broke and can't convert a singleone of them. Likewise, I've seen
(30:11):
instead or Instagram accountswith 500 followers, and the
person who runs it is living afine life, making as much money
as they need from those 500followers and whatever's
happening outside of Instagram,making Instagram kind of a
useless metric for 99.9% ofbusinesses. So you need to think
(30:36):
about what metrics in yourbusiness one that you care
about? And to actually matter.
How about that. So you can thinkI think every business, it is
actually the definition ofbusiness, that you are watching
your profit margins. So revenue,yes, profit margins, yes, times
two. And I say definition ofbusiness, because that's why
(30:59):
you're in business, it's to makemoney. If you weren't here to
make money, you'd have anonprofit, and you wouldn't be
caring about making money, youjust be doing good work. That's
there's a fuzzy line aroundthat. So is what it is. But you
need to be tracking revenue, andprofit. And then think about
what other metrics are importantto you. So Kim, I know that you
(31:20):
run a design agency. So maybefor you is revenue and profit,
in addition to you know, clientsclosed,
every quarter, that can be agood sort of sr, metric to that
revenue and profit point. Youcan also think about things like
(31:43):
website traffic, so is youronline marketing, actually
converting into website trafficthat would then potentially
convert into new clients. Sowebsite traffic can be a really
good one. website traffic canactually be in a couple of
different places, too, you cando just like sheer pageviews,
you could do. I always love agood bounce rate. And your
(32:04):
bounce rate being the rate atwhich someone enters into your
website and then bounces rightback without visiting more than
one page, you want your bouncerate to be low. So it's one of
those metrics, you actually wantthat number to be as low as
possible. And that's a metric ofhow interesting engaging your
website is? Or are you gettingthe right people to your
website. You can also thinkabout things like, you know, for
(32:28):
me, it's podcast downloads, Coryactually creates, sort of
gathers all of our metrics forall of my KPIs every week, and
then month, and puts them in aset of spreadsheets and then
loads them into slack. So that Ihave, I have a dashboard that I
can look at every single week,that shows me what all of my
(32:51):
most important metrics are. AndI'll even pull it open. Let me
show you what my metrics are. Soat the moment, one of them has
conference ticket sales. Andthat's the thing too is your
metrics can change depending onthe season of business that
you're in. I'm currently in likea conference ticket sales
season. And so conference ticketsales is a metric that I want an
update on every single week.
Another one that we have, is theweekly community member count.
(33:16):
Has it gone up? Has it gonedown? Is it the same, just
generally not engagement, notlike how many people are posting
none of those things, I can gocheck that out if I want to. But
in terms of this dashboard, myKPI is number of community
members. And then we also have aweekly podcast stats spreadsheet
that he goes into every week,and lets us in puts in there how
(33:38):
many episodes or how manydownloads we've had in the past
seven days, past 30 days andpast 90 days, I believe, as well
as total downloads, so we cansee the rate at which the
website is growing. And what doyou also put what, like you also
often tell us what podcasts aredoing the best. So if anything
(34:03):
has changed in our top 10episodes, Cory will also update
us on that. So it's a it's kindof getting long and rambly. And
I get really excited abouttracking metrics, but just
choose the ones that are mostimportant for you. And are
actually metrics of growth andsuccess. They are different for
(34:23):
literally every single business.
And we'll say a lot about whatkind of business you're running
and what is most important toyou. So a little example of this
is like the smallest littlemindset shift. But I think
you'll see why it's important isyou could track how many clients
(34:46):
you close in a quarter. Or youcould track how many websites
you launch in a quarter. Sothink about the difference
between tracking clients gainedand tracking clients completely.
He did. kind of similar, butkind of a world of difference.
That one little difference cansay a lot about what kind of
(35:08):
company you are trying to
Unknown (35:12):
grow.
Emily Thompson (35:15):
Just that little bitty shift. Okay, have some
comments over here. Colleensays, I use the track your
metrics worksheet from beingboss isn't a good one. To track
several things throughout theyear, monthly profit loss, cash
summary and clients I worked onlists, subscribers and tracked
hours. Those are some good onesColeen, I seriously can't live
(35:38):
without it on my wall as anoverall metrics view each day.
That is wonderful. It's reallyhelpful to see trends year to
year as well completely agree.
That's one of my favorite thingsabout having things loaded up in
spreadsheets, especially, butalso in worksheets. And we've
talked about that around CEOday, or the CEO day kit, there's
(35:58):
sort of magic to having theseworksheets filled out every
single year. So you can go seewhat growth is like year to
year. So I love that. And Kimsays thanks, definitely love the
little mindset shift ontracking, right? It can be
whatever you want it to be, butbe thoughtful about it and then
track it. So we literally havewhat's the word I'm looking for
(36:21):
repeating, we literally havesort of repeating to dues and
Asana so that every week, Coryis tasked with gathering this
information and sharing it withme, you can do this yourself.
I'm also tasked with ever beingto do to actually review it, so
that I remember to look at itevery week as well. But you can
use your project managementsoftware to prompt you to gather
(36:44):
this information. And it can beas easy to as just logging in
and looking at your websitestats. It's really important to
be able to gather a bird's eyeview quickly so that you can
make decisions, either on thefly or gather information to
make more thoughtful decisionsas needed. Next up, we have a
question from StephaniePeterson, I'd love to hear your
(37:11):
thoughts on coldish outreach togenerate new business referrals
have been huge for me, but Ineed to bring in some new
customers as well. I am a fan ofdoing cold outreach, with the
right intention andexpectations. How about that,
(37:34):
because it's going to be very,very different. So let's start
with intentions. Whenever you'redoing cold outreach, the first
thing that you should want to dois not to sell, but to help. And
that's kind of the same thing ifyou do the selling, right. Good
helping will lead into selling,but you want to form a
(37:58):
relationship, nurture arelationship and then sell. So
the intention is not to likejust convert someone
immediately, because that'sprobably not going to happen.
The only time that ever reallyhappens is if one, they're like
you are a gift from theuniverse, if you landed in their
inbox on the day that they weretelling their business partner
that all they needed withsomeone like you, then like,
(38:18):
yeah, you're going to convertthem. And that's going to be
amazing. That doesn't happensuper often. or two, they've
actually already seen your stuffelsewhere. So but that's not
even cold, you just you coldpitch, but you're actually kind
of maybe a little warm to them.
Um, so only really in those twocases, are you ever going to
immediately convert a coldpitch. There are probably other
(38:41):
cases too. But those are reallythe only two. So you have to go
into it with the idea that youwere actually there to form and
nurture a relationship based onanything, all kinds of things.
It could be anything I actuallywas doing. I had a girl in a
mastermind, this last round thatI did, and she wanted to work
(39:04):
with organizations that had todo with animals, and
specifically horses shows shewas a web developer and wanted
to do web development projectswith equestrian clubs, let's say
let's get it pretty narrow. Andso she was going to start doing
called pitching to theseequestrian clubs. And it wasn't
(39:26):
a matter of her going in andsaying you have a crappy
website. I'm making a new one.
It's more like You know what, Ilove horses and I'm so grateful
that there are companies in theworld that are doing things like
you are beginning a conversationnot about websites, not about
bettering your business, notabout any of those things, but a
mutual love of horses and it's areally great example of how you
can go in to form a relationshipbased on basically anything and
(39:49):
then see where the conversationgoes. You can direct it as
needed, and then
Unknown (39:57):
pitch
Emily Thompson (39:58):
so intention, you're going to help first form
relationship and then sellsecond expectations, you have to
go into a very clearexpectations. And here are a
couple that I think you shouldadopt
Unknown (40:14):
one.
Emily Thompson (40:16):
One out of 25 cold pitches will get a reply.
Sometimes it's more, sometimesit's less, you're not going to
have even half of the people youcalled pitch to reply back to
you. Most likely, unless it isthe most aligned and beautiful
thing for so many people. Sodon't get disheartened when you
(40:38):
get 24 nose or 24 crickets. Andone No, thank you. Because
that's maybe that one reply thatyou get. And then you get back
up and yeah, keep doing it. Sothat's an expectation, too, it's
probably going to take more thanone email. Whenever I'm cold
(40:58):
pitching. I don't do this veryoften. But I definitely do. I've
recently went through a round ofcold pitching for brands for the
being boss conference for brandpartnerships and sponsorships.
And even if I don't hearsomething from someone, I'll
email them two or three timesbefore I sort of put it in the
(41:18):
pile of this isn't happeningright now. So it becomes a thing
where you have to not only coldpitch them one time, but
multiple times. And another oneis get ready to one here knows
to babies but threes. I've heardof people getting some nasty
emails from some cold pitches.
So you can't go into coldbudging, being like faint of
(41:40):
heart, or being easily havingyour ego easily bruised, or
whatever it may be. You have toyou have to go into it as you
just landed in somebody's inboxasking some weird questions and
they are probably busy or don'tcare or just deleted it or you
probably just landed in junk andnever actually made it to their
(42:02):
inbox anyway. So intention,expectations. But it also
totally think that you should doit. Because I have gotten some
really great connections fromactually is even like an
expectation piece. You may notactually get out of a
relationship, what you want tolike what you go in there to
(42:22):
get. So you may go in therewanting to book a new client.
But what you may get is a newbusiness partner, or they may
have a resource for some coolsunglasses that you've been
looking for. Or something likethat. It could be anything,
anything come out of actuallyeven tell you. I called pitch
(42:44):
Kathleen back in the day. Ithink one of the first emails I
ever sent her was as a webdesigner. She had gone freelance
now I was following her on herblog. I can't remember I think
maybe we had been instagrammingInstagram commenting or blog
commenting at this point. Somaybe this isn't completely cold
but even warm. I went into it Ishe was doing branding. I
(43:07):
offered her my web designservices, in case she ever
wanted to, you know, pass herweb design people off or work
with me to develop websites thatshe was designing or something
she's like, No, thanks. Notinterested. Look at us now. You
never ever know. Rachel saysyes. And always focus on there.
(43:28):
What's in it for me? Oh, what'sin it for me? As in what's in it
for them? Yes. Like make itabout what's in it for them? Not
what's in it for you? Stephaniesays awesome advice. Thank you
relationship building is huge.
Yes, it is. and Lindsey saysvery reassuring info on cold
calling. I think it's justsomething that you do sometimes.
(43:51):
And again, make it aboutbuilding relationship. Don't
even think about it as coldcalling. Think about it as like
reaching out to someone that youmay want to be friends with.
Business friends, it can bebusiness friends, that's fine.
But start there. I think you'llbe much happier with the
results. I do love some coldpitching. I like talk no who
(44:11):
likes who likes it? reallynobody.
Unknown (44:15):
No one likes it.
Emily Thompson (44:17):
But I do I do have plenty of stories of people
who have done cold pitching oflike, think about your hot shit
200 list. You make a list of 200people that you want to work
with or collaborate with orwhatever. We have a worksheet
for this, that we will stick inthe show notes. But you create
(44:39):
this lesson you start coldpitching and I've talked to many
bosses who have started doingthis hidden who either ended up
on that podcast that they wantedto be on or books that client
that they wanted to book orwhatever it may be cold pitching
can absolutely get you resultsif you're really in for it.
Right Caroline says oh hacia 205forgotten how good a resource
(45:01):
that is. I literally picked upthe hot sheet 200 list and did
it again for myself. Four weeksago, something like that. It's
still a tool that I use. It'svery, it's very important to sit
down. Sometimes you just thinklike, Where do I want to go
next? Who do I want tocollaborate with next? Who are
those dream clients that I wantwant to work with next? There's
just something aboutenergetically going for that
(45:22):
next thing, thinking aboutwhat's next that like, takes you
there. Okay, so if you're a bosslistening to this and you're
feeling like you totally want tobe having creative business jobs
like this, or have a safe placeto ask these kinds of business
questions, then come check outour online community at being
boss to being boss community isfilled with thoughtful
(45:44):
questions, helpful bosses andplenty of resources to help you
in your business. You can learnmore and come check us out at
being boss club slash community.
Thanks for listening. And hey,if you want more resources,
we're talking worksheets, freetrainings in person meetups and
vacations and more. Go to ourwebsite at www dot beam boss dot
class. Do the work be boss
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