← Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth
Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth
959: Build for Your Bandwidth
00:40:34
Your business needs to be designed with your bandwidth in mind so that you’re capable of doing it in every season!
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- [00:02]
Abigail Pumphrey
Welcome to the Strategy Hour podcast brought to you by Boss Project. I'm your host Abigail Pumphrey and I'm dedicated to supporting online businesses. I don't believe in one right way to build a business. I'm here to help you build business your way. One that supports not only the life you have, but the life you want. I'm on a personal mission to help you become financially free. I'm taking all the lessons learned as I turned a layoff into a seven figure online business. I'm here to help you prioritize your life every step of the way. Whether you're creating your first digital product, growing an email list, or scaling an already profitable business. Settle in. It's time to Talk strategy.
- [00:44]
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- [01:13]
Abigail Pumphrey
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- [02:13]
Unknown Guest
You get to decide how you're spending your money. I'm not here to tell you what that looks like, but there is some level that is enough. And like going beyond that. Unless there's purpose behind that. More often than not, you're just adding stress to your plate. This episode is meant to be a permission slip for anyone who is just living life and juggling everything that life throws at them. Whether that means you're navigating caregiving or chronic illness, going through a season of grief, just parenting, having a hard year, or even all of the good things that life can throw your way. You have other priorities outside of business. And I want to help you design a business that's specifically designed with your bandwidth in mind. Your capacity, the amount of time and resources and energy you have to devote to it. Not what society thinks you should be doing, not what other business gurus are telling you is necessary to be successful. I want it designed around you. I think there's this misconception that if you're designing around bandwidth, that you can only grow slow, or that it can only be a tiny business, that it can only ever be so profitable. And that's simply not true. Everyone's bandwidth is different. 1, and your bandwidth changes in every season of your life. So the amount of time you have this year may be different than next. The amount of time you have this month may be different as it is in the fall. And that is totally okay. The thing is, most businesses are designed far too rigid to withstand all the things that can happen in your real life that would impact your small business. I know this is about to, like, ruffle some feathers for people, but you are allowed to build less than you're capable of.
- [04:28]
Abigail Pumphrey
I know.
- [04:29]
Unknown Guest
I hear you. I understand your hesitation. I. I know why that feels so strange, because the majority of listeners here are go getters. You've spent your whole life being a perfectionist. You've always desired to be top of your class or teacher's pet, or maybe I'm just speaking for myself. But the idea of building less than you're capable of can be a huge challenge. And it's more so a challenge for your ego than it is for the logistics. Because obviously building less than you're capable of means there's less on your plate. But it's a hard kind of mental game to get over what that actually means to you and how your role shifts. There's this misconception that capability equals sustainability. Like, if you're able to do it, you should be able to sustain it. And there's plenty of things I could do for a short season that I could absolutely not sustain for a long season. And I know your list is similar. I know you have a whole bunch of things on your plate that you could do this week or this month or this quarter, but if you were required to do them for the amount of time you're in business, for now and for always, you simply could not. I know you can handle a lot. You're Already handling a lot. You're already doing more than the average person. Just the fact that you're in business at all makes you unique. Like, do you know how few people actually produce content and show up online? I know it seems like a lot because you're in this world, because you're out there consuming this content right alongside your ideal clients, but I promise you, it is such a small percentage of the people that are existing and living their lives. You are already in the minority by choosing to run this business online. And it's easy to want to just say yes to more. To say yes to every opportunity that comes your way, to say yes to every new platform that arises, to say yes to trying new things and experimenting with new things and implementing new strategies and going about copying and pasting other successful people's own strategies into your business. Like, I get the appeal of all of that. And I also know that you don't have to if you're like constantly white knuckling your way through work. Like, that's not sustainable, that's survival. Like, you're just trying to get through. And I think there's plenty of things in life that you have to show up that way because circumstances require that you have to try to get through it. And it's going to be hard, like a cancer diagnosis. Like, I can only imagine the weight and the gravity of that coming into your life. I've watched other family members go through it, but if that were to happen to me personally, I can only imagine the level of responsibility and grief and confusion and why me? And all of these things that are thrust upon you, you're going to fight, you're going to white knuckle your way through that. You are going to do what is required of yourself to work as hard as you can to beat that disease, right? But your business is not meant to be something that you have to fight. Your business is meant to be something that is there to support you. Your business, as basic as it may sound, is a means to an end. Your business can have a mission, it can impact people, it can do great things out in the world. But more than that, your business needs to be. To be sustainable, to be flexible. It needs to be designed with your bandwidth in mind so that you are capable of running it in every season. And when you get into a new season where that bandwidth changes, it needs to be flexible enough that you can make adjustments and keep going. Your business is there to support you in every season of life. It is there to bring in income to pay you to Pay your team or your other business expenses to earn a profit. And that profit is meant to not just afford your life today, but ultimately help you build to the life that you want someday. And if it's doing things the way it should, hopefully it is also helping you save and invest in your future. It is fueling what's next. Like, I am so over, so over the word hustle culture that like, if I could avoid saying it for the rest of my life, I would. But we have been told a lie that the harder we work, the more successful we will become. And there are plenty of things that are required of you to get things off the ground and to get things moving that do sometimes require short term sacrifices. But in the long term, your business should not be a sacrifice. You do not need to be giving up part of yourself, part of, you know, your value system. You don't need to be going against your own morals to be successful. You need to be building in alignment with who you are today and who you want to become. U O Nobody. You owe nobody. You do not need to prove yourself. You do not need to prove you're worthy. You do not need to land on some list or win some award. You are worthy just the way you are. You were born worthy. You deserve to live a good life. And my hope is that your business can potentially provide more flexibility than any typical job out in the open market ever could. Because it's going to be designed for you. It's going to be designed based on how you want to show up, how you can show up, and all the logistics that go along with that. We've been told that the only right way is to keep growing. That every year we need to make new goals and put new strategies into place to just keep growing. I'll tell you that's not normal. There is no business out there that is just growing exponentially year after year. We often talk about scale and growth like, like it is required of us. But I want to give you the opportunity that if you want a business that's smaller intentionally, why not? Who said you had to have a million dollar business? Who said you had to, I don't know, insert all of the ridiculous things that standards that have become these like, things we're supposed to want. Like, who said that we had to do any of them? Scaling down is just as much of a strategy as scaling up. There's a reason you hear about big businesses doing layoffs. And oftentimes you're always hearing about it from the internal employee perspective that it's so sad and so devastating for these people to lose their jobs. And no doubt we want to be building businesses to support the people that are in it. We don't necessarily need to be designing so that people are disposable. That's not what I'm saying. What I am saying is if your bandwidth and capacity changes, you having a smaller business or a smaller team or both are options. And it's not morally good or bad to pursue one or the other. It's neutral. It's how you go about doing it. I recently was at a conference that was hosted by a specific company and I was at the happy hour, okay. And I ended up across the table from these two women that were schmoozing with some people that worked at the company. And I knew they worked at that company and I just assumed that they worked there because they were so close and tight knit with these other people. And I started talking to them and I was like, hey, what's your role over at insert company name? And they're like, we don't work there anymore. And I was like, anymore. And I was then confused why they were in attendance. And so I inquired and I started talking to them about their experience and what had happened and how they lost their job. And I have Never, in my 15 plus years of professional employment heard two people speak so highly of a company that let them go. They were at an event hosted by this company because their old team members invited them and they looked forward to being there because they were so supported during this layoff process that they continued to trust this company. So much so that I definitely got the vibe they would reapply and work at the same place. So I don't want you to be convinced that you're evil or mean or rude or inconsiderate. If you decide to make that decision, ultimately it's a business decision. I haven't really talked much openly about what this has looked like because I've been figuring out how to even talk about it. But personally, I have made changes over the last two years to make this business smaller. My audience has continued to grow and I have let go of most of my paid staff. I still have some incredible supportive team members and my revenue is down. And it would be really easy to say that I've failed or that I am not doing well as a business. These were intentional decisions. I would have someone who stepped away for a better opportunity and decided not to backfill their position and let some parts of the business go. And I felt good about that. I'm okay with my business being smaller because it better matches the season that I'm in. I had become so focused on management and leading the team that I didn't even really get to spend as much time with my clients and students that I wanted to. I want to be more present for those people. I want to create a deeper impact on them and not just manage an incredible team. And that meant it needed to be smaller so I could be more in that creator seat, more in that creative environment where I could put content out into the world myself. I could write and test things. I could do things on the fly with less people paying attention to what's going out the door. And it would be easy to assume that if I have a smaller team and I'm bringing in less revenue, that that must mean I'm making less personally. And that's not true. You can absolutely. And I've seen it happen so many times, you could be making several hundred thousand dollars with a high profit margin and make more than potentially people you see as competitors making a million or 2 million because their overhead is so high. They are supporting so many people that it's very hard to keep up with. I know at our highest, just payroll. Just payroll alone was over $60,000 a month. You want to talk about pressure? That was a lot of pressure. I didn't want to build a business in a pressure cooker. I wanted to build a business in an environment where I could best support y' all. And I feel like I've done better work.
- [19:09]
Abigail Pumphrey
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- [19:50]
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- [20:20]
Abigail Pumphrey
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- [20:46]
Unknown Advertiser
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- [21:12]
Unknown Guest
I feel like I have been happier. I have been far healthier. I've lost 60 pounds. Like I exercise more, I eat better. And all of those things are possible because I I was intentional about making adjustments to make the business better match my bandwidth or what I was willing to give in that season. Because like I said, you can build a business smaller than you're capable of. Not to mention more is not always better. I will never forget the trajectory our business went on back and I want to say 21. There was a six week period where we were really gunning for growth. Okay. And we put together a launch that brought in single handedly in one launch over $300,000. It was planned, promoted and executed in less than six weeks and brought in over $300,000 in sales and it broke my entire business. While we did our absolute best to support people and provide the best support and the best coaches and the best learning environment, I felt very out of control. There were so many circumstances that I was responding to that I never imagined having to deal with. Because a business growing at that rate and the amount of people we had to hire to support that level of growth, it was absolutely crazy. I think a big reason this gets so out of hand is that growth has this kind of connotation that like more equals better. But if you don't know what it's for, then my question would be why? Why do you want to build a business of that size? And you could have good reasons if you can justify it. I'm not saying go for it. Like, I know plenty of people that want to build bigger businesses than I have. Great. I will absolutely clap, show up to your book signing and cheer you on. Like, I am here for that. But like, to what end? When you have that level of income, I think you have to have a purpose. I think you have to have a direction now, you know, once you get that dream house and that reliable car and that new kitchen and the pool and the deck, insert all the material things, sure, you could travel more, sure, you could donate to more charities. But, like, what is enough? Because if you keep focusing on more, more, more, more, more, not only are you putting pressure on a business that you likely have not put every cog in the right place for it to be fully scalable to that end without something breaking, but you've completely lost touch with what you need. I think when you're smaller, you have a clearer idea of what your business needs to provide for you, to just pay for the life you have. You know how much money your current income is bringing in. You know, what you would need to replace to live a good life. But then when you keep growing, your lifestyle adjusts. You buy a nicer house, you buy a nicer car, you buy more expensive clothes. You, you know, maybe start getting massages and hair done and whatever, right? You're spending more because you have higher income. And I'm not saying that's a bad thing. You get to decide how you're spending your money. I'm not here to tell you what that looks like, but there is a level. All of us have it. It's different for every single person out there, but there is some level that is enough. And like, going beyond that, unless there's purpose behind that, more often than not, you're just adding stress to your plate. But I don't want to give you the misconception that designing with flexibility in mind means it has to be small. I think so often we go into building a business and we look around, here's what competitors are doing, here's what other people in our industry are doing. Here are how people are growing, here's how people are monetizing, and we're looking at, how can I replicate this level of success? And we do those things. But if that's not uniquely matched to our skill set, our bandwidth, the amount of time we have, the level of support we have, we are going to end up up a creek without a paddle. At some point, whether it happens this week or six months down the line or 10 years in, at some point you are going to end up in that position. The exciting opportunity is that when you go in from the beginning or from today on, I'm not saying all of us are perfect and started out this way, but if you go in with a plan that I'm building a business with flexibility at the forefront, man, so many more things become options. I have a couple friends in the online space that while I don't necessarily think they've marketed themselves this way, they absolutely have built businesses with flexibility at the forefront. And I have watched them grow a lot faster, a lot further, with less back end cost, with less backend support because they built around scalability. They built around systems that weren't rigid, that could keep growing as they grew. They could keep bringing in more income without necessarily adding more cost. I want to ask you, like, how your business is structured today. Is that something that helps you breathe easier or are you feeling somehow behind? Are you building for the amount of time and energy you have today, or are you building for some aspirational version of yourself that may or may not be attainable? Some of you may have already done this once. You may from the beginning have thought about, okay, this is what I can do, this is what I'm capable of. This is how much time I have, this is the level of support I have. I want to grow a business at this point because I want to make XYZ amount of money to afford XYZ things. Like you went through that exercise, but then you kept aging, your life kept evolving. And I want to ask you, when is the last time you reevaluated and how often are you building that reevaluation in so that you are continuing to make sure that it's matching where you're at right now? Because your ideal client may have changed, the amount of energy you have may have changed. You may have gotten a new diagnosis, you may have gotten that phone call that changes your life because now you have to take care of someone else that you love. You may have had a number of things land on your plate, but have you made adjustments accordingly? My question to you is, what do you actually want to be known for? Do you want to even be known for something? I think so often we think we have to have legacy in mind. Like I have to leave behind this imprint that I was here and I did this thing and I had this level of impact. Do you? Because if your life is more important than your work? Does that matter? As morbid as this sounds, and I realize for some of you this is going to feel incredibly weird, but I recently went through this exercise in the leadership course I was in, and he asked us to imagine the day of our own funeral. Okay? And we're looking back on our lives. Who's at the funeral? What are they saying about you? I want you to sit with that. Who's at the funeral? What are they saying about you? What's in your obituary? What do people remember? Because when I sat down to do that exercise, I thought about wanting to be known for how caring and loving and generous I am. Not some book that landed on a New York Times bestseller list. You know what I'm saying? Like, so often we over complicate these aspirations. I'm not saying that they're not beautiful or that you shouldn't work towards some of those things, but if you really sat down to think about, what do you want to be known for? If you want to be known for being generous and kind and giving, you probably need more time away from your business to give back to the people in your community, to volunteer more, to be there for your kids more, to show up for things more. Right after you've kind of thought about the end, I want you to come back to present a little bit and look more like five or ten years down the line. Far enough that you don't know what's going to happen, far enough that you are not in control of the outcome other than the things you pursue today. I want you to think about what is your life like? Where do you live? Who do you spend your most time with? How much money are you making? How are you spending that money? What is your lifestyle? How often are you traveling? What are you doing during the day or night? How are you spending that time, with whom, for what to do what? And I imagine when you do this, it is going to open up things for you that you're like, wait, I don't want to just produce a podcast. I want to bake more sourdough bread. I know that feels like a pandemic throwback, but truly, like, do you want to stop in the middle of the afternoon to do something else? Because if so, you have to build a business that supports that. I want this to be permission that you're allowed to build a business that prioritizes peace, slowness, softness, presence, being here right now. It doesn't always have to be more. It doesn't need more from you. And when I say That I again, I don't want you to think that that puts limitations on your growth. It just puts limitations on how you structure your growth. Your business architecture, the design, the actual structure, the systems, the support, the strategies that you put in place. That is what is going to fuel your future. These limitations aren't limiting your potential. They're eliminating how much time and effort you put in to your business to get any number of results. Also, talking about results, results don't just need to be income or growth or follower count or some other analytical or KPI data. Results can equal more rest, more margin, more clarity, better well being, better health. Those can be results too, but they have to be prioritized. There is ROI on that. Like so often we talk about return on investment for income or the amount you're spending or investing in other things, but there is an ROI on you being rested. Inspiration, innovation, longevity, those are all results of rest. Those are all from you doing less than you're capable of. That space is not wasted. It's where your next idea lives. And if you don't have space for it, you're not going to invite it in. The goal isn't more, it's alignment. I want to see you build something beautiful, flexible, sustainable right now with the bandwidth you actually have today. And I want you to know that even if this is not the norm online, that in this space, in this community, this is the thing I want to lead with now. If you are looking for a space that allows for this kind of flexibility that is really helping you analyze with this in mind, you absolutely need to be a part of the co op inside the co op. I'm talking about structure. I'm talking about how you build your business to align with that bandwidth so that you have something that is an asset that helps you bring in cash flow, that fuels your life today and your future tomorrow. That is the entire point. That is what I do, that is how I help people. And if you want access to that, the co op is the place to make that happen. You can find out more by heading over to creative templateshop.com you can, you can hit Join now and see far more details. I would love to see you inside and I would love to see you prioritizing this in your own life and business. Now if you listen to this and you thought, dang, I know someone who's stretching themselves a little too thin, I've seen them struggling behind the scenes. Maybe they're not talking about it publicly, but you know, because you're close, you're friends, send them this episode. Do them a favor. Let this be their permission slip. I want to create a community where we are sharing resources and we are backing each other up. So please give this to the people that need it from you. I want to see them thrive just as much as you are thriving. Before we wrap up, I want you to do a little self assessment. Audit where you're at today. What part of your business feels too heavy. If you could change one thing today to make your life easier tomorrow, what would it be? What is the thing that's looming over you that you're like, I can't do this one more time? What are you feeling like you're performing instead of just showing up for and being present for? If you feel like you're putting on an act, that's usually a sign of something that needs addressed. It may not need to go away entirely, but you might have to adjust how you're making that thing happen. I can't wait to see what you do next and I'll continue to be here every week giving you guidance and support and strategies and ideas and permission for everything you do next. Thanks for tuning in. Make sure you're subscribed and I cannot wait to talk to you more next time.
- [38:51]
Abigail Pumphrey
Hey, a few quick favors before you leave. I'd love if you'd share today's episode, send it to a friend who needs to hear it, and post on social. You can show us where you're listening from, your favorite takeaway, or why someone else should listen. Be sure to tag me, Abigail says and bossproject Project so we can share it.
- [39:08]
Unknown Guest
Okay.
- [39:09]
Abigail Pumphrey
Second favor, to get podcast updates and all the behind the scenes news from Boss Project. I'd love if you'd join my VIP list. Just head to bossproject.com signup to make sure I have all your contact details. Really love this show. It would mean so much to me if you'd leave a rating and review. It not only helps more listeners find the show, but allows us to bring on quality sponsors so we can keep bringing you this valuable content for free. Thanks so much for listening.
- [39:35]
Unknown Guest
Until next time.