You're listening to the life friendly business podcast. I'm your host, Erin Thomas Wong, business coach, mentor, author and founder of the cocoon VIP membership, empowering women around the world to build businesses on their terms. If you want to grow and scale, a business that works in harmony with your family and your life, this podcast is for you.
When Everything Feels too much, when you're juggling multiple hats, like caring for kids or relatives, life admin stresses in your business stresses in relationships, it can be tempting to take a step back and press pause, especially if you have kids coming up on extended school holidays. And if you're the only person in your business or the face of your business, it might feel impossible for you to switch off, which can lead to feeling quite trapped in your business. However, this is the life friendly business podcast. And I'd like to help you to create a business that you can dial up and dial down when needed, but one that doesn't need to stop.
We all know how much more effort it takes to start up a freezing cold car in the winter. But if we keep the engine powering away, the car stays warm. And when we're ready, we can easily glide into action. I'd like you to think about your business like that engine. So instead of stopping and starting and constantly having to warm up the engine again. And really what we're talking about is building up your presence again, building up your visibility, again, building up your client list. Again, if you keep stopping and starting, wouldn't it be so much easier to get some systems and processes into place so that those things are always ticking along. And keeping the engine warm, even if you can't work as many hours because of your other commitments.
Extended school holidays do not mean that you need to let your engine go cold. Even if you don't actually want to be working during that time, I find that school holidays, a really fantastic for some blue sky thinking as well. So when we step back from the normal day to day of our routines, actually it opens us up to some creative thinking time. And we can look around and take inspiration from all the different things that we're doing. So even if you might not have time to sit at your desk, it can be a fantastic time to be inspired. But this all sounds too good to be true, right? So, you know, how on earth do you keep your business going, when actually, you haven't got any time to work on it? Don't worry, I'm going to give you some things to think about. But first of all, I thought I'd just give you a bit of an overview as to how this works in my business and how I keep the engine warm.
So as mentioned in episodes one and two, this is my fifth business in the last 13 years. And during that time, I've learned an awful lot about what makes something life friendly and what does not. So in my business, I have multiple offerings or multiple income streams. So in terms of keeping the engine warm, it varies for each of them. The Cocoon is my main product, my main offering, and that's my monthly subscription group. So I provide all the content for that or I organise experts to come in and create content. I am in the Facebook group hosting the group, being there to answer questions, being there to start conversations, and also making sure that I've always got fresh stuff to help teach these women more about building their business more about building their confidence. So during the school holidays and things like that I can be really organised with arranging lots of stuff in advance, and then really, I just need to be there, I need to check in on a daily basis and see if anyone has any questions.
If I literally want to take some time off completely, then I can ask someone else I've got an online business manager to go in and be that person be that point of contact in the group. I also offer one to one mentoring. Now obviously this needs me to be present. So unless there is an emergency with my clients, I try to schedule these calls during term time. But of course I have the flexibility that if they desperately need me that I'm able to move things around and allocate that during the school holidays. But what I need to be doing to keep the engine warm with the mentoring is keep letting people know that it is available and that is something that I do so you're kind of dropping the seeds and letting people know that you're there you're available for one to one mentoring, even if I'm not available at that time during that week during that school holiday. I can still be selling mentoring packages for them to start during term time.
I also run the evolve mastermind, which is an amazing intimate group for a maximum of six women. And we work together every week to give them the support the wraparound support to be able to build their business. So these run during term time. But once again, even if I'm not actually running a mastermind at the time, I need to be out there with my marketing. And I also host the impact interactive online workshops three times a year. So I need to make sure that the messages are getting out there, even if I don't have an event coming up. So what I need to do is plan ahead and plan ahead for the year taking into account the school holidays, and also the busy times of year in terms of my business, like for example, September and January, people often start back and they're raring to go. And they want support to help take their business to the next level.
So for me, keeping the engine warm really comes down to three things.
Number one, my top priority is keeping my members and my clients happy, making sure that they've got everything they need.
Number two, I need to keep marketing, I need to keep visible, keep my messaging out there so that people have me top of mind when they're ready to get support.
And number three, I need to keep planning. So as I mentioned, I actually love the fact that when I step away from the day to day of my normal work schedule, that actually opens up this creativity. So I love to give myself that space to be thinking about my future projects, and future ideas for podcasts, those kinds of things. So that's something that I do.
So the three ways that I keep my engine warm for my business, or to keep my members and clients happy, keep marketing, keep visible, and keep on planning. So it's really easy to when you look at, for example, the summer holidays in the UK, they're six weeks. But I know that in Italy, for example, they're 14 weeks, it feels like a really big chunk of time. And if you can't actually service people during that time, because you're off with the kids, it's really easy to start panicking about your income, I've absolutely been there. But that's why it's really important to have different products, different offerings, different multiple income streams, so that you can see an overview of the year and you can think okay, I know that I haven't got income coming in in August, but it's okay. Because September and October, I can do this, this and this to increase my income. So as I mentioned, marketing and keeping yourself visible is something that's really, really crucial. And I always try to plan ahead to do this. So now you know, I have the podcasts, and that will be going out every Wednesday during the summer. But also I'll be putting out social posts, they'll all be scheduled in advance. So even if I am not on social media all the time, I know that those messages are going out. So I'm still in people's minds when the kids go back to school in September, and they're ready to take action and get support in their business.
So even if you are not available for client work, or have limited capacity for creating the product that you sell, it's really important to keep up the marketing because you want to be getting new people all the time into your funnel so that you can nurture the relationship with them.
So how can you keep the engine warm in your business, and save yourself all those splattery cold starts? Okay, here are three things for you to be thinking about.
Number one, map your year, plan out your promotional periods, think about when you're available for face to face work when you're not when you have capacity to make more products when you don't. Also you can review your finances so far, like which are the best months for you generally, when do you make the most income when things quiet and plan your year accordingly. And the more we do this, the more relaxed we can feel about the fact that you might have to take a step back during August, dial your business down because of other commitments like looking after your kids.
Number two, use schedulers and email automation so that you've got the systems and processes in place. Now I know that there's been talk about whether if you use a scheduler for social media, whether you reach as many people as if you post organically, we kind of did a little bit of a test, myself and my online business manager and there wasn't really a huge difference. And for me being able to schedule things in advance. I know that I've got a consistent presence out there. So for me that outweighs any issues there might be with the reach. I just want to know that that stuff's going out there. Especially when I'm having to take my foot off the gas a little bit. Use your schedulers like buffer for example. HootSuite, whatever it is that you want to use to keep the conversation going with your audience, offer them inspiration, educate them about the things surrounding your product or service. So even if you don't have anything to sell right now, you still need to be putting those posts out there to stay top of mind. And you can repurpose blog posts and things like that, like make sure that you've still got those messages going out.
Also, I mentioned email automations. So do you have nurture sequences in place. So when people buy your product or service, do you have an email that says thank you for buying this is how you use it, this is how you access a service. And then you can check in with them on that email nurture sequence as well in a week, in two weeks in a month's time. So you know, even if you are not in your business, sitting at your desk, that you have got this connection with your customer, and they know that you are there, at the end of an email, if they need something, they can just hit reply.
And number three, this is a really, really crucial one. In order to keep your engine warm during periods where you do not have as much work time available, you need to be really clear on your 5% activities. Now, this is based on something that James Wedmore talks about who's a digital marketer. And he talks about the fact that actually, only 5% of our activities are the things that will actually move the needle on our business. And we can get so lost in the 95%. The 95% can be the things that we are doing everyday, we're so busy, we're so busy, we're so busy. But actually, we're not seeing any change in our business, or we're not making the money that we want to be making. And it's because we're spending way too much time focusing on the 95%. And let's be clear here, we don't have time to be faffing we want to build a life friendly business, we do not want to be sitting at our computer for 50 hours a week.
So think about what your 5% activities are, these are the really important things, these are the things that keep your clients happy, these are the things that get you your sales. And if you're really not sure what these are, please reach out, this is something that I can help you with. But if you know what your 5% activities are, even if you have 10 minutes a day to work, if you focus on your 5% activities, you're going to keep your engine warm, and your business is going to grow.
My message really is don't be a slave to your business. Like I said at the beginning, you know, when you run a business on your own, or you're the face of your business, it's really easy to feel trapped and feel like you can't possibly take a holiday. But you can you need to be organised. And maybe you need to outsource and you need to get someone who's got your back so that if you want to take time off, they can organise things for you. So a fantastic example of this. Because the fact is that life will throw obstacles in your way, it's inevitable. For me back in 2019, I had a herniated disc, absolutely horrendous. Obviously, there's all this time when you're in this pain, and you're not sure what it is. And then I had an MRI to confirm it. But the amazing thing in terms of my business is that I already had my support network in place. I had my online business manager, I also had a business mentor. So even though I was in a lot of pain, and for those of you who live with chronic pain, my hat goes off to you because it was horrendous and obviously really affected how clearly I could think and you know, motivation and all those things. But because I have that support network, it meant that everything kept running. It meant that even though I had much less capacity to be thinking about things and about doing things from the outside, my business still ran as usual. And yes, I had to postpone a few one to one sessions. But otherwise things worked well. And it's because I had my systems and processes in place. And we all know you know, with having kids like they can be off school they can be off sick at the moment they could be off isolating with COVID or after being in a bubble with someone with COVID. So there are all these reasons why you need to get your systems and processes and your support network in place. Because if you do it makes it much easier to bend like a willow tree when these things are thrown at us and still keep on track and make progress in your business.
So if you've got extended holidays coming up or periods when you know you won't be able to focus on your business. Just keep this in mind. It's a lot easier to ramp the business back up if you've kept the engine warm. I hope you found today's episode useful. Please do share with Anyone who might also find value in it, and I look forward to seeing you next week.
Honestly, it can feel like there is a lot you need to learn when building a thriving business. And it's easy to feel like you'll never know everything you need to be successful. But it is possible just so long as you stay focused on building the right knowledge and skills. When you join the cocoon VIP membership, you'll have the opportunity to book a one to one orientation call with me and I'll help you to prioritise the activities that will have the biggest impact on your business and direct you to the materials and the library that you need. There's no need to learn it all. We'll just focus on the things that will make the biggest difference to you. We have everything you need to build a life friendly business. So check out the cocoon now at lifefriendlybusiness.com/cocoon
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
