Freedom in business is designed, not found

If you want more freedom in your business, you need to understand that freedom in business is designed, not found. Lots of people start businesses to escape being an employee. They think if they become the boss, they’ll have more freedom, but for so many business owners, the freedom they dreamt of isn’t achieved. That’s because freedom doesn’t happen by accident. If you want to experience freedom in your business you’ll need to make specific design choices to enable that to become a reality. Keep on reading to find out how freedom in business is designed, not found.

 

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FREEDOM IN BUSINESS IS DESIGNED, NOT FOUND

 

The Freedom Myth of Service-Based Businesses

Many service-based business owners start their business thinking it will give them numerous types of freedom. They’ll have the flexibility to work when they want and where they want. They’ll have the choice about the type of work they do and the clients they work with. They’ll have the freedom to have endless holidays (as they are no longer restricted by how many days off they can have). But this is far from the reality for many service-based business owners.

Many successful service-based business owners find themselves with fully booked calendars, that mean they don’t take the time off they desire. Many feel the pressure to say yes to clients they don’t really want to because demand feels less than supply. Many feel the pressure to keep on working because if they stop their business will come crumbling down.

So if you are in a similar place, please know you are not alone. There are many business owners who find themselves with a business that’s good but doesn’t fulfil their needs because freedom wasn’t put front and centre when designed in the business. As a service-based business freedom definitely won’t happen by default, it has to be designed.

 

You don’t have the freedom to switch off on holiday

If you find yourself going on holiday with your laptop or work phone and struggling to properly switch off that isn’t a fun place to be in. The problem is likely to be that you are the person delivering the service and even if you have told clients you aren’t working whilst on holiday, it isn’t just about delivery. Without you, no marketing and sales happens so you are worried about the impact taking time off now will have on the coming weeks or months.

How you can design your business to fix that 

Build your team – Knowing that someone else can be checking your emails and managing client/customer support can make all the difference with you being able to properly switch off. Now there is no need to check ‘just incase’. Instead, you’ll know everything is being handled and if there was a genuine emergency they’d get in touch. Building your team can start as simply as hiring a VA on a freelancer / part-time basis so this isn’t even about committing to having an employee or someone on a full-time basis.

Design your offers so that you can take breaks without it impacting your income – If you are directly trading time for money then without being able to work, your income will stop. This can make going on holiday way more stressful, especially if you didn’t do your financial forecasting and pricing based on you taking X number of weeks off per year. A way around this is to have offers that mean you can still make money whilst you’re away. For example, you might have clients on monthly packages, but you aren’t required to deliver every week in that month so you can take time off and still get the full monthly fee. Or you might decide to have an offer that is entirely passive, like a digital course, so you can make sales and ‘deliver’ whilst on holiday.

Ensure marketing and sales can still happen whilst you are on holiday – Another reason business owners struggle with taking time off is not only can they lose money for not working but they know without them no marketing or sales will happen so they’ll return to a slow start and have to rebuild momentum. To counter this you can design your marketing and sales systems so they aren’t reliant on you. This means having marketing that isn’t reliant on you ‘showing up’ that week and also making it so that you can return to either sales or as a minimum a whole set of new leads for you to follow-up with.

BUILD  A MARKETING AND SALES SYSTEM THAT WORKS WITHOUT YOU – JOIN SHINE ONLINE   In Shine Online I’ll teach you how to build a marketing and sales system online that not only will  attract and convert your dream clients in the most efficient and effective way possible, but will also NOT rely on you so can take time off and not worry about leads and sales stopping. If that sounds good to you come and join us. To find out more and to join SHINE ONLINE click here

 

 

You don’t have the freedom to work when you feel like it

Maybe you started your business thinking it would give you great flexibility and you’d be able to work when you wanted to. However, now you find yourself with a calendar that is full of calls and commitments. You look at your calendar the night before and think what happened to the dream of flexible working.

How you can design your business to fix that 

Shift to asynchronous communication – Many employees have a day that is dictated by meetings. Many business owners have escaped the trap of endless meetings, but have replaced it with something else – calls. If you are delivering services via calls your diary can quickly feel very full, rather than spacious. Switching to asynchronous communication, such as voxer coaching, can enable you to still deliver personalised one-to-one support but without the commitment in your diary for when that will happen.

Switch to group programmes, membershpips and digital courses – If your diary is filled with calls then it’s time to look at your offer suite. By adding in a group programme or digital course you could still work with the same amount of people (even more), whilst drastically cutting down the commitments in your diary. For example, you could have a group programme or mastermind where you just have 1 call per week, and this could easily replace working with 5-10 clients on a weekly basis. Or you could have a digital course that is completely DIY so no involvement from you.

Set strict boundaries around your calendar – Unless you go to completely asynchronous communication or passive income streams you are going to have to have some commitments in the diary, but even by being stricter with your calendar it can feel different. For example, it might be that you decide to have calls restricted to specific days or time. This way you can have a couple of days where you do calls, but then a few days where you have total freedom over when you do and don’t work.

 

You don’t have the freedom to work from anywhere 

You wanted to be able to work from anywhere to be able to travel more whether that be locally, nationally or internationally. But between time-zones, client expectations and your diary it just hasn’t become a normal reality for you.

How you can design your business to fix that 

Think very carefully about core times for working – If you are delivering anything in real-time there will also be a limit to where you can travel to and still be able to deliver in daytime, or who you can work with. The reality is at any time of day it is night somewhere and day somewhere else. But by thinking ahead of time you can make choices that will minimise awkward clashes.

Minimise synchronous delivery – The less synchronous delivery you have the less commitments you’ll have in your diary which will make it not only easier for travel to happen, but also fewer things to consider when thinking about timezones. To minimise synchronous delivery you might change the delivery within an offer but you might also create new offers that will enable you to do a piece of synchronous delivery that is one-to-many rather than one-to-one. For example, you might decided to do a mastermind or membership where you have live calls, but that could end up being one a week rather than 10 calls a week with one-to-one clients.

Switch from video to audio/text/email – One of the best changes I made in my business with reducing my video commitments and where possible focus on supporting clients through audio/text (in my case Voxer). Doing this gives me the ability to be anywhere with wifi and work, but not worry about where I am. Over the years I’ve helped clients whilst at the side of the pool, at the train station, in hospital, from my best friends house, in a car etc. But the beauty is they don’t know that. So relook through your offers and see where you can minimise video and switch to audio/text/email.

 

GET A PLAN TO SUCCESSFUL REDESIGN YOUR BUSINESS FOR THE FREEDOM YOU DESIRE Redesigning your business for more freedom often involves multiple steps, and as someone who has helped business owners redesign their business over and over again I know how to make the transition as stress free and successful as possible. I’ll help you to map out the whole transition in just one day. More freedom and flexibility really isn’t that far away. For more information and to book a Strategy Day click here.

 

You don’t have to the freedom to not be on social media.

You started your business because you are great at what you do and wanted to do it with good clients and under your control, but along the way you realised to get great clients you’ve got to actively market your business and now you find yourself in a position where you feel like a full-time content creator that has to be always online. You feel the pressure to constantly be posting on social media and ‘showing up’.

How you can design your business to fix that 

Batch and schedule content – Even if you are posting daily on social media you can post every day without being active on social media everyday. For example, in my business I have posted every day on Linkedin and Instagram for years, but most weekends I don’t open a social media app. To do this you’ll need to commit to batching and scheduling content in advance.

Reduce your reliance on social media – If the reason why you feel you need to show up on social media is because without it you won’t make sales then you need to diversify your marketing so that you can make sales without social media. Doing this will make it much easier for you to be able to feel more free around social media. And the beauty is many other types of marketing – email marketing, content marketing, SEO, ads – can all be scheduled so you aren’t swapping one active type of marketing with another.

 

 

Real freedom in business is designed

As you have hopefully seen, to have the freedom you want in business, you need to be intentional about what is happening inside your business. This means looking at your offer suite as a whole, every individual offer, your marketing and sales system, and your team. Small changes can make a big difference and some changes can help in multiple ways. But you have to first sit down and really work what changes in your business would give you the freedom you want.

For example, in my business the two best changes I made were moving from giving weekly calls to my one-to-one clients to having fortnightly calls and voxer access in between. Using this A/B format gave me much greater freedom with travelling as if I travel on a non-client call week I have very little commitments in my diary. It’s easy for me to be able to go on a workcation every other week, and because the support I’m giving to clients inbetween calls is voxer I don’t have to worry too much about will there be a place I can take a call. Also dodgy internet is a bigger issue with calls than it is when sending voice notes / messages will.

My priority was building a business that would enable to work-from-anywhere and travelling more. For you it might be something different. Be honest about what you want and then you can start to build your business so that it enables that to happen.

That’s it. You now know that freedom in business is designed, not found.

 

As you’ve seen freedom (whatever that means to you) is possible, but only if you design your business for it. In some cases it means hiring, in some cases it means creating a new offer and in some cases it means adjusting what you are already doing.

 

But taking the time to work out what needs to change and then making those changes is so worth it. Because when you have a business that gives you the freedom you crave and deserve life becomes so much better.

 

 

If you are serious about experiencing more freedom and flexibility in your business then a Strategy Day would be perfect for you. 

A Strategic Day is a one-to-one annual planning strategic experience. I’ll take you through my 5-step planning process and by the end of the day working together you’ll have your plan for the next 12 months.  

As you’ve seen achieving more freedom and flexibility will requires consider a number of different aspects, but with my planning process you can get your new strategy done in a day and start implementing the very next day. 

For all the information, and to instantly book, a Strategy Day click here.