[00:00:00] Emma: Hello, welcome to Tea with the Queen. Today, I want to talk to you about being in the messy middle. I find that with our clients, this is usually in about year three, or about the time they start making revenue of about 300, 000. For some reason, those two data points are quite relevant and quite significant.
[00:00:45] This is a behind the scenes. Even if you're not making that kind of money, you will get something out of this. I've got some tips and tricks up my sleeve and I hope you enjoy what we've got to talk about today. But first some background for you. When I first started my business, I didn't think I could sell.
[00:01:02] So I went out and I the pavement when we could and talked to as many people as I could in our first quarter. Because of that, in our first quarter, our revenue hit 240, 000. I realized that's a lot of money. It's a lot of money to a lot of people, and I would not recommend this strategy. Here's why I spent the first year of my business delivering that work, which made me feel like I was drinking from a fire hose.
[00:01:33] I did not recommend that, but I did push through. And today we're going to talk about what happened when I hit the messy middle and what I did about it. From my experience, the messy middle was about year three of my business. We just hit 750, 000 in revenue. My smallest daughter was six years old. We had just come out of one lockdown and we're about to enter another, although we didn't know it at the time.
[00:02:03] And by December of that year, I was burnt to a crisp. I wasn't really burnt out, but I knew that I was on the cusp of burnout. It was a year like no other. If you live here in Melbourne, if you live in any other States in Australia, you will know it was a crazy, crazy year. With lockdown after lockdown here.
[00:02:24] Clients are a lot more needy than usual because there was so much change on the daily, some of them pivoting, some of them doing amazing, and some of them navigating heartbreak as they closed down or went bankrupt. I poured more into myself that year in business than I have ever before. I had some corporate work that went really well, and it came to the renewal of the contract, and I knew they weren't the organization I wanted to work with.
[00:02:54] And, by not renewing this contract, we were losing a big chunk of revenue. Because of all of these things, I had a gut feel that things had to change. Or I would fall apart. I had 12 different offers out and my focus was so dispersed. I felt like I was doing all the things and doing nothing at the same time, like running on a treadmill, right?
[00:03:19] My priority was my clients, getting results, making sure that that was still happening. So I knew that the client experience was still bang on, but to my own detriment, I'm sure you've been here. Anyone who's been through any peaks and troughs of business know how this feels. I had some realizations. They were this.
[00:03:40] I forgot to say no to money. I teach people in their first year to say yes to money. I just forgot to say no when I was already stretched thin. Things were unsustainable. Just too much in the diary. P. S. My husband did tell me that after year one, but he may have been ignored. Hope he's not listening. I was tired.
[00:03:58] I was tired from not doing anything for myself outside of my family and my business. We've all been there. We've lost the joy. I was working way more than I wanted to. And I was giving the dregs to my family at the end of the day. Hands up. Who's been there? the realization I had is that my business had evolved and lost a little bit of its clarity of its offers.
[00:04:23] And I loved simplicity, but I didn't feel like it was simple. These things do happen. This is what happens in business. When we've been in and around a while, we evolve, we create new things, and we do all the bits and pieces for everyone else. And we say yes, and we work out the details later. Sometimes it's good to take stock.
[00:04:45] Hindsight's a wonderful thing. Here are five things, five things. I always say that and then there's actually nine things, but here are nine things I did to get through this. I held a meeting with myself that lasted about three days. Uh, I poured through all the data. I looked at all the offers and services that I loved and that made good revenue.
[00:05:07] I looked at the ones that gave me joy and energy and looked at the ones who weren't profitable and they didn't give me joy. So I put them into categories. It was awesome. Two, I reminded myself why I was in business. To help women get awesome results to make sure they have revenue and profit in the bank.
[00:05:26] Three, I always wanted to build relationships
[00:05:30] and deliver to my clients. They have always been my two focuses and the rest is the busy admin crap that we just have to do as owners. Or do we? How much busy admin crap are you doing
[00:05:43] that you could outsource? That's my question for today. Number four, I let some clients in who no longer aligned with my values or maybe they never did, but I didn't realize it. So number five, I cut all of my offers back. So I had a core offering of three only. Yes, there's a few more now, but they, there were, we pulled it back to three only. Number six, I upgraded my outsourcing components like events and marketing and my knowledge and own skills around the finances.
[00:06:17] I up leveled that, I out sourced even more things that didn't give me joy, which is basically everything except relationships and delivery. Number seven, I invested in a new website, some new technology,
[00:06:29] and some different people around me
[00:06:31] for some creative thinking. Major upgrade. Number eight. I won't lie.
[00:06:37] Some of the decisions did hurt. Some of the people who I worked with in terms of suppliers, I had outgrown. And whilst I love them as people, I knew I needed to make some tough decisions to clear the way for myself to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And number nine, my ninth realization, these are a lot of realizations.
[00:06:56] I committed to spending a year in the business, consolidating everything we had and trying hard Very hard, not committing to anything else. Shout out to Serena Francis, who is my business manager and also happens to be my older sister. She has worked with me in the business for five years. Bless her soul.
[00:07:16] she tried really hard and continues to try really hard to keep me accountable and to not let me put things in my own diary because it's just a mess. I double booked myself. I triple booked myself and she's like hands out of the diary. So we committed to spending a year. In the business consolidating.
[00:07:36] That was a lot of things. Hey, for feeling like I was in the messy middle. I suppose the big thing that you need to think about is can you pause? Can you just pause for a minute, take some time out and take stock because that's really what you had to do just so that we are clear sorting through this whole process.
[00:07:54] took about a year. There were some very quick wins. You know, you can cut clients like that. you can finish up work like that, those things are a bit easy, but I was determined to set us up not only for success, but for sustainable success. Yeah. We're now heading into year seven. So a few years have passed.
[00:08:14] Are we there yet? Well, from an evolution perspective, yes, we are, Interestingly, from year three to year seven, where we are now, we continue to have on average a 15 percent growth year on a year, which is amazing, but also brings about a different kind of challenge.
[00:08:36] The types of challenges that I face now are, these are not in order, but there's eight of them. Managing myself, my health, and my energy to perform. Business is a marathon, not a sprint, right? So you need to be match fit. And I focus on my health as part of that. Two, finding great people to work alongside me as subcontractors for some of my corporate roles.
[00:09:03] Number three, we now say a lot more no. To a lot more work. No being a full sentence and that's okay. We're finding more people to refer potential clients to, which is brilliant. So someone who has been in business a shorter period of time, or maybe needs a set of clients or whatever, we are more than happy to refer.
[00:09:24] Five, we focus on the work that gives me maximum joy and has the most amount of impact for me. And that will be different for you and for everyone. The legals, they've become different. Licensing, for example, is a bit more complicated than a contract, for instance. Uh, but we are doing some more things around our legals.
[00:09:46] So we've always had legals and a shout out to Tracy Marla Crane at TM Solisa. She does an amazing job for us. Now we're moving into some licensing bits and pieces, uh, more on that in another episode. Seven, we're continuing to keep relevant and listening to our audience and making sure that what we offer actually matches the environment.
[00:10:08] And actually we've probably done that the whole time, which is what it's got us into the pickle in the first instance. We want to serve our audience and our clients in whatever way that looks like. And so, uh, that's been interesting, but I have to be very careful not to add more things in the diary without pulling stuff out.
[00:10:24] Because I'll just keep pushing and pushing and that's not great either. I don't want to go back there. And then number eight for us was we need to think bigger sometimes. And I've just finished reading a book called 10 X. Uh, it's by Dan Sullivan. I think his name is Dan Sullivan. Anyway, 10 X the book. He also write, wrote, who not how and the gap and the gain.
[00:10:45] And he talks about if you needed to think about 10 X. Could you just do more of the same? No, you couldn't. You'd have to have a fundamental shift. And that's what this next level this next year is about for us. But the positives to going through this is it doesn't feel as hard now. The messy middle, chaotic and overwhelming at times Now. We have a lot more money in the bank, a buffer, which means you have, we have more choice on who to bring in, what to outsource and where to spend our money. Right. When we're in the messy middle and a lot of my clients experienced this, they're not sure if they can outsource or not. So we'd have to look at some, we go a bit deeper into the numbers and we'll work out actually, do they have enough profit or enough money in their bank account to outsource?
[00:11:46] If you are in the messy middle, I promise it gets better, but you need to stop and you need to pause and you need to get some butcher's paper and take a moment to have a meeting with yourself and work out what services and products and offerings you have and what you need to snip and what you need to cut.
[00:12:06] pop in. If you do those things, you will see a significant shift from overwhelmed to clarity and from chaos to something more manageable. I would love to hear how you go. Let me know if you're in the messy middle. I would love to hear that as well. And if you've been in the messy middle and you're out the other side, let us know.
[00:12:29] I want to, I want to know and I want to hear what you did to get from the messy middle to the beauty of the other side.
