0:00

Welcome to Episode 51 on the Live Blissed Out podcast. Did you know it wasn't until 2015 that the population of London UK reached the same level as pre WW2? Hello action takers! Welcome to Live Blissed Out. A podcast where I have inspirational and informational conversations with business owners and subject matter experts to help us get the scoop and the lowdown on a variety of topics. Tired of hesitating or making decisions without having the big picture? Wanna be in the know? Then this is the place to go. I'm your host Marisa Huston. Helping achieve bliss through awareness and action. Thanks for joining me. The information opinions and recommendations presented in this podcast are for general information only, and any reliance on the information provided in this podcast is done at your own risk. This podcast should not be considered professional advice. Joining me is Claire Whittaker. Claire is a business systems and automation coach and the founder of Artificially Intelligent Consulting. But she didn't always know that this was going to be her path. Claire started her career as a research chemist working on developing new products and finding ways to scale them using lean manufacturing methods. After a while she wanted something more fast paced, and that was when she joined Amazon. Initially in account management, she moved across a variety of roles, eventually working on projects and launching products using artificial intelligence across Europe, India and Japan. Now as a certified SME consultant, she's working with small businesses sharing the framework that helped her drive consistent, sustainable growth without getting overwhelmed. Her signature program DRIVE together helps business owners identify and implement systems to double revenue without working extra hours. She is offering Live Blissed Out listeners a free 15 minute coaching call for people to get some quick wins on systems improvement and learn more about the program. You may also join Claire's Facebook group where she shares loads of tutorials and weekly trainings. To learn more, visit www.artificiallyintelligent consulting.com. Before we jump into today's episode, I'd like to tell you about Crowdcast. Whether you're a business, maker or coach, Crowdcast is the simplest way to connect with your community over live video with webinars Q&A's live courses or summits. It's designed to be as quick and painless as possible, with easy setup, a single URL and no required downloads. The interactive Q&A chat and polls feature create real conversations. Connect through HD streaming with no delay, invite attendees on screen and broadcast to platforms like Facebook Live and YouTube Live. You can track performances with advanced analytics, communication with in app emails and connect to over 500 of your favorite tools with Zapier. It even integrates with Patreon. Start your limited 14 day free trial with 10 live attendees and 30 minute sessions with all business features included. Just follow the link in the show notes to let Crowdcast know I sent you and help support the show. With Crowdcast, your stage is ready. Hey, Claire, it's so nice to have you here all the way from London, UK. How exciting!

4:25

You're so right. People just like to tell everybody, I just don't have enough time. Look at how busy I am. I'm doing so many things. And it actually makes you feel accomplished when you can say that, but it's not necessarily effective for utilizing the little time that we all have. Because the one thing that we have is limited time. Time is not infinite. There's 24 hours in the day for all of us and that doesn't change no matter what.

4:49

Exactly. And I think that's like a big part of what I do. And I want people to be able to have a successful business and get everything done that they need to have done, but then have time afterwards to like spend with their families or chill out with their friends or watch every series possible on Netflix should they so desire. Right now I feel like it's almost a cliche, that they say that entrepreneurs and people who own their own businesses work 80 hours a week, so they don't have to work 40 hours a week. That's like a massive thing. And I think a lot of it comes from a place of lack of clarity, lack of understanding exactly what they need to prioritize with their business and feeling okay with just eliminating the rest of it. This is the reason where I always try and get people to start when they're thinking about how they can save time in that business, how they can streamline things and make things more efficient. This whole eliminate piece. What can you stop doing? And a lot of that comes from being able to take some time to look at everything that's going on in your business. Get it all out of your head. And then to understanding exactly what is working. What's driving your sales? Where is your revenue coming from? If you're running a digital business like I do, for example, there's a lot of pressure to be on every single social media platform and to create a lot of new content, to do podcast interviews, for example, to make yourself really visible, as well as setting up all these different funnels and basically doing everything. And you can have online courses and memberships and all kinds of other things within your business. But actually, when you take the time to look at what is driving those sales, what's growing your business, you'll see that there's probably one or two things that are really working for you and really helping you move the needle with what you're doing. And by focusing down on those one or two things and eliminating the rest of the stuff that you're doing or at least putting it on pause. I know this can be a big thing for a lot of people. They don't want to completely stop doing something in case they're missing out. And they have a little bit of FOMO. And they're really worried. If they don't do it. Everything will fall apart. So I encourage you to just put a pin in it, literally write it down, store it somewhere, the thing that you were going to do, and just leave it for now. Eliminate it for two weeks, see how it goes when you just focus on these things, and then come back to it and then think about do you really need to do that thing? Do you ever really need to pick it back up again?

7:33

It's so important to do that. I think that we tend to do what everybody else is doing. You just said it. So if everybody says I have to be on every social media platform, I do it without really thinking...Is it working for me? Some platforms work very well for some businesses and not necessarily for others. You really need to evaluate it for yourself. We also tend to jump into solutions without really analyzing...Where are we? How are things working? What have I been doing? And looking at it from a results perspective? Am I getting the results I'm looking for? And if not, what are alternatives that I can apply in that time to maximize the efforts that I'm putting in for my business?

8:17

Exactly. And it's also something that just doesn't get prioritized. If you're working in your business, and you're trying to grow your business, and it's the lifeblood of your family, and it's your income, and it's your safety net, it can be really difficult to actually stop and pause and take the time to think about, okay, is this working because analyzing some of that is probably going to reveal some things about your business that you might not be too happy about. And you might not like actually having to have that critical eye and think about everything you're doing. But if you're really serious about making it work and growing your business in a sustainable way, particularly when you're just starting out, or you're just working with a small team. Maybe it's Just you and a couple of other people, then you don't have the resources to do everything and do it well. Some of these people that you see, these experts in the space, the gurus, all of that they have big teams that can help them with that. They outsource things, they do all of that stuff, and you don't get visibility of that. So when you're starting, try and have that in the back of your mind. Or if you're starting to feel overwhelmed, make sure you've got that and you're thinking about that. So cut yourself a little bit of slack and feel okay with those one or two things and really focusing down. And once you know what those two things are, then we get more into the processes and more into the systems and how you can start to make this a lot more efficient and how you can use tools like automation, or potentially start delegating more effectively to be able to save even more time. And when you do save more time, then you can start to pick up some of these other things. You can take a look at other things you might want to do in your business and really evaluate whether they're a good fit, whether they're going to get the right results and spend your time thinking about the strategy, as opposed to those little bits and pieces and the admin and worrying about whether things have fallen through the cracks, feeling overwhelmed, and just not really being able to get stuff done.

15:50

And speaking of that, then Claire, what I find is that people feel like they have to be good at everything. And if they're not good at a particular area, we've been trained that well, if you're not good, just work at it, just keep trying harder, and just keep doing it until you get better. And to some extent that might work. But the reality is many of us just are not good at certain things. And we may not even like it. And if we don't like it, and we're not good at it, no matter how much we throw at it, we fail, and then we get discouraged. To me, that's a point there that is very important to understand, because that is a decision making point where you say, Do I want to keep struggling with this piece? Or do I want to then get help? Find somebody out there that loves doing it that does it really well, that can really support my business, because you have to strike a balance. Let's say I decided I wanted to reach out for professional help and call you for example and say, Claire, I need help with my business. Oftentimes, people don't take that step. They feel like it's gonna take more time for them. Like they're thinking, first of all, that person's never going to know my business. They're not going to do it as good as me and then I have to train them and I have to go through all this headache to get this thing set up. And then they get so overwhelmed with the thought of it that they put it off. And then they keep doing it. And the bottom line is what happens is nothing. They're still drowning, they still have the same problem that they had before. How do we overcome that hurdle or mindset that stops us from moving ahead?

17:18

You have such great points. This is another big one that I get all the time. I think there were a few things here that I kind of want to tackle. So one of them is a need for control. One of them is like the benefit actually, when you first start off doing everything yourself. I think there are some benefits to that. And then the other one is hiring people to solve your problems. In terms of the first one the thing that stops a lot of people from hiring or delegating early on is this is my baby. I need to look after this. I've built this. No one's gonna do it as good as me. Yes, not everything is perfect, but it's working well. Like I am enjoying the things that I'm doing. I've got it up, it's really precious, how am I going to give it away.? And for that one, I think a really nice way of thinking about it is there are some things, some features of your baby that maybe you don't like quite so much. They really drain your energy, they're boring. You hate doing them. It's just not fun. And it's actually taking away from the things that you love doing in your business. And those can be a really great place to start. And for a lot of people, that's going to be these little admin things, or these little tweaks, like setting stuff up. Like for example, if you're trying to collect information and feedback forms, from customers, getting all of that into a nice report that you can actually use and get the data on. That's not fun. Like no one likes doing that. Maybe just hire someone to do that. Let's get back that little bit of time which they you could totally do yourself. It's not like you're bad at it. But you don't need to be doing it. It's not enjoyable and start there and start with these little things and then build up the trust about trusting yourself with delegating, and build up trust in other people to complete tasks. And I think that will really help on that one. And this actually brings me on to my second point, which is that there is some benefit to doing things yourself first, when you're building up your own business. And the benefit is really outlined by the example I just gave of when I hired my editor. I knew the process, I knew what was important, and I knew the steps. I wasn't any good at them. I was terrible. Like, I should not be doing it myself. I hate it and it takes me forever, but I at least knew what needed to happen. Or at least knew how to evaluate whether someone had done the job well or badly. And that's really valuable. And being able to have that experience is going to help you. But just don't do it for too long. Do it a couple of times, and then find someone who can help you do it better. The third point is hiring too late. I think this is something that a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of business owners do. They want to get everything done and they feel like they're not justified in hiring someone else, because maybe they're not making enough money, or they feel like the business isn't big enough to justify it. And then all of a sudden the business grows and you're really overwhelmed. You need help. There's no way you can deliver this by yourself, and you need help immediately. But you can't really spend the time training someone. You haven't thought through exactly what they need to do. You're hiring in a rush, and then obviously, it doesn't work. And it doesn't work because you're basically hiring someone to fix your problems. And the better way to do it is to hire someone to implement solutions, at least at the beginning. Know that your business will grow. Have that faith. Know that you're going to work it out and you're going to get there and while you're getting there, and just before you actually get there, write down the processes, document what you're doing. Think about everything that you've got going on in your business. And really from the beginning, I would recommend, start to think about it as if you've got a team of 10 people and what you're gonna give to each person so that you are documenting this everything that you're doing. You can hand someone over when you're ready to make that hire. An already written and tested document that outlines exactly what you need them to do, the tools that you need them to do it and when they need to have it done by each week. So you're able to approach hiring from a place of clarity and give the person you're hiring the benefit of that clarity so that they can deliver for your business from day one. And it will just go so much smoother. I will be honest, I didn't do this when I hired my first VA. I was like I need a VA to help me with social media. This VA knows about social media. Great. Okay, help me. At the time I was working in a very technical business. Again very specific needs. I knew exactly already where I wanted to post things out, how I wanted them to look, all of this stuff, but I didn't give her any of that information. So obviously, when she was doing all of that, creating all the content for me and doing all this other stuff, she wasn't able to give me what I was expecting, because I hadn't told her. It did not go well.

22:27

You mean you didn't do a mind meld with her?

22:30

Like I tried, but it was strange. Like she didn't have this telepathic powers that I had been promised when I started entrepreneurship.

22:38

Shocking.

22:39

I know! I was very annoyed, but I learned my lesson and the next time I had I ended up hiring someone to do some editing for me of like videos and podcasts. And before I did it, I was like, okay, so this is the process I need to go through to produce this piece of content. I need to write the outline, I need to record it and then I want this person to take that recording, which I'm going to put on Dropbox for them in the same folder every single time. I want them to take that recording, clean it up, make it pretty create show notes for me, make a graphic, and then upload everything once it's done into this folder. And so I wrote all of that down and had that process outlined with everything in it already. And then when I wanted to hire, I wrote the job post, put out the hiring. And then I actually hired two people whose profiles I liked, said, this is the process that I've written and I want you to go through. I'm going to give you both the same like test exercise. I will pay you both for all of your time, however long it takes you. I just want to see who I'm going to work better with, see whose product fits of my style better and what I want better and then at the end of the test, I'll hire one of the two of you and the other one, thank you very much for your time, Here's your money, but it's not going to move forward. And doing it that way, and I really recommends this hiring a couple of people or doing a test run, where you know how you want it to turn out first, just gave me so much confidence and I knew that the person when I actually bought them on, they were going to know everything that they needed to do, they were going to be able to do it without me having to give them any input because they've already done it. We've already tested it, I know that I can feel confident in that. And I can just send them whatever and not need to worry at all and just focus on doing the things that I'm actually good at in my business. And that was such a relief.

25:09

It's such a good point, when you have done the process, you experienced it. There's no better teacher than experience. And so it's the same as, as you mentioned with the podcast. Now I've done so much of it that I can blindly tell you all the steps that it takes from interview to final output and it's only because I've been doing it so much and doing it myself. But you get to a point where, oh, that part of this whole process I'm not too keen on, now you can say, all right, how about I send that to somebody else to take care of that for me. And you can only make that decision once you've experienced and really understand the flow of that process. Right?

25:45

Exactly.

25:46

I find that people just get so gung ho about coming up with a solution to a problem, but they don't do the things you're talking about which really leads to something that's near and dear to my heart, which is organizing and planning. Because organizing and planning really applies to everything you do in life. And so really thinking about how things are working, what's not working, that's part of organizing your day, your life, your workflow. I wanted to get a sense from you about what is the percentage? How much time should I be spending, analyzing everything before I get to the point where I'm ready to come up with some sort of resolution or idea that I should start implementing?

26:26

I'm actually going to take a quote to answer this question from someone much smarter than me. So Einstein said, if he had an hour to solve a problem, he would spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes thinking about solutions. I truly believe that as a business owner, you should do the same thing when it comes to your processes, your strategy, your systems, all of these things. The more time you spend really gaining clarity for yourself, on what is the problem that you're trying to solve, the better you're gonna be at implementing a solution.

32:13

Thank you so much, Claire, for being here today. Really happy to have you on the show.

32:18

And thank you so much for having me.