The Winds of Change: How to Face Them for Lift Off

Let’s talk about the winds of change and how to help them take, how to help you take off.  

Because I have been traveling and will continue to be traveling with my business there are a few things I want you to think about as you move forward. 

I’d love you to think about in terms of how you help your business with the winds of change? 

But the another big question is how. How is your business set up or how can you set up your business to help accommodate changes and disruptions? Is there a way that you can do that?

So for example, I have a membership. I’ve been talking about memberships cause we had Stu McLaren this morning. I love my membership. And right now, as it stands, we meet in the membership on Wednesdays. And I lead three out of four of the monthly events. I usually have a guest expert coming in for one of the events, but one of my business besties asked me, “Well, what are you going to do when you’re on the road? And you may or may not be able to have internet?” And I’m like, whoa. So with the winds of change and being able to set things up, can I put backups in place? Luckily I have some amazing masterclass experts in business besties that I can lean on to say, “Hey, maybe you can do the coaching session if I can’t make it. And I don’t have internet so that I’m not letting down my membership.”

So what are some of those things that you can put into place that can give you more flexibility? Are there ways that you can rearrange your schedule to give you more flexibility? 

Creating Systems of Change Takes Time

I am still trying to figure out how to coach everybody while I’m on the road. Whether I have internet or not. I mean, we’re going to have “travel internet”. It’s what I’m using now. Hopefully it’s clear. It seems to be pretty clear so far. 

So, the question is:

1. What are the things that you can do? 
2. How do you remove yourself from your business?

And this is a really great goal. Mike McCalla talks about it in his book, Grow Like Clockwork, grow your, grow, your business like clockwork. I was just looking at his website five minutes ago and I can’t remember the name and I love the book. In that book, the goal is how do you give yourself a four week vacation? How do you pull yourself out of the business in enough ways? 

Now, if you’re at the startup phase this may or may not make sense, cause there’s a lot of that stuff that you’re doing, but that’s the question to look at. What could you outsource? Even if you’re not paying for it, maybe there is an exchange. Maybe there’s something else that you can be doing to pull yourself out of some of these tasks and things in your business like that you might hate doing.

Eliminate, Automate, Delegate

Or as my business bestie, Gary likes to ask, what can you automate? So there’s eliminate automate and delegate. Those are Gary’s three favorite words and lots other people too. I mean, I think Mike McCallum has talks about this in his book as well. And, Gary is going to share with us a little bit more about how powerful things like this can be for your business.

Gary shared about it in the Heart-Centered Leader Summit, Gary Schleifer, publisher of Coach, the magazine for coaches. 

The second question is, how can you really create backup systems? What can you do to create those just in case items that could benefit and even protect the way your business flows? Who could you lean on? 

I mean, here’s the thing. If you aren’t lucky and you don’t have a business bestie, like I have that happens to have aligned then you need a plan in place. My business has two business besties, Gary, and Stasha the period coach. These two are at least in alignment with me and they can help coach, but maybe you could also find somebody else where you could pay. If you have to have somebody just like when a parent’s not home, they have a babysitter. 

What do you do in your business? That could be, you know, you’re second in command or somebody else can take over this one item while you are gone. Perhaps it’s your concierge or something like that, that could show up and help out to take care of clients when you’re not available.

So here’s your homework assignment and or question. What is one thing that you could have do or create to have a backup system for? Whether it’s guest coaches, guests, experts, guests, something inside of your business, something like that. Or a team member to help take care of something if you have to go away, because what if you have to leave your business for a period of time? That’s the thing about having a leveraged business, like a membership. It isn’t as relying upon me as an individual, like my coaching, the one-to-one coaching and my VIP clients. 

I still have to figure out how I am going to fly in the winds of change with them. Luckily, I’m giving them a lot of advance notice that I might be on the road for six weeks and that the schedule is going to be flexible. And so part of it’s going to be like, “I have internet now let’s have a conversation.”

Create Flexibility

Talking about another thing to consider is can you create a sketch, a schedule with flow or flexibility? 

So on my schedule, I used to have Friday as my flex day. And so what I would do is I would have two hours set on Friday that if I wanted to take on a client or I wanted to add a project, I could do it during that time.

So here’s the question. Are there places that you can create in your schedule to give you more winds of change? Ooh, yes. So Dorothy says, she’s been thinking about this and she needs to put something into place and she really likes my idea about flex time. Okay. So flex time is a great time, especially if you have a fixed schedule, because there’s also the fact that there will always be things that interrupt. The important things that interrupt the day like, my daughter has to go get her tooth pulled or, whatever those emergencies are. Well, let’s say it was planned during a thinking time or a blogging time or a scheduled time to do your writing. Well, now you’ve got to rearrange that. If you have flex time built in weekly then you can look and see I have this two hour window of flex time. Well, I now need to move this scheduled activity that got bumped because of a child emergency. And now I can move it over here. 

So those are things that you can do to add into your schedule, to give yourself the winds of change. You could also have, lots of these blocks that are flex blocks. So they’re not like a dedicated activity. So you can say I’m going to do a writing retreat this day or this four hours. And I’m going to dedicate all of this. This is where you have just these blocks to do. And it could be that one of those blocks is you’re like, “I have a flex block today. I’m going to go get a mani pedi. I’m going to go have lunch with my business bestie or my regular besties.”

Any of these things that you can think of. So that’s another thing that I want you to think about in terms of how to give the winds of change, the wings, to fly, other things that you can think about when you think about change is.

How do you have anything in your business that helps you reassess the way you’ve been doing things? Because sometimes the winds of change need a different type of process procedure or what you’ve been doing may or may not be working according to plan. How do you check it out, assess it and roll out something new? 

So for example, I am looking at some different delivery strategies and or lodging strategies for the membership. I’m looking at the winds of change and how I can make it happen. 

I think everybody heard 2020’s theme was “Pivot. Pivot. Pivot”. Thank you, Ross Geller. And I think that was the term for the year. It  was how do we adjust what we’re doing in a way that’s, that’s in relationship with our business. 

There’s also, how is your business serving? Like what you originally created. Is it serving you? Is it providing you the revenue? Is it doing what you intended? A lot of us become entrepreneurs because we want to have control over our life and our schedules and spend more time with our family.

And yet, sometimes the business takes over.  We overwork. So that’s a question for you. How often, or do you have something set in place to do regular assessing to see if it’s still meeting the original intention? If it’s a structure that’s still working for you and how could you do it differently in a way that brings it into your essences.

Floating with the Winds of Change

So just to kind of recap, floating with the winds of change. One, are there things that you can, as Gary would say, eliminate automate or delegate, especially if you have to go be somewhere else and set up a backup system or have backup people in terms of what you’re doing in your business. 

Can you create something into your schedule that gives you flex and flow for the wings of change in any given daily life? When emergencies show up again, I recommend putting at least a two or three hour block of flex time into your schedule. That’s what I call it.

Flex time is for those important, but not necessarily important things that you have to stay on top of and take care of. Now, if it’s an injury for your kid, that’s important. Cause we gotta make sure everybody’s safe and healthy, but you know, those things happen. And do you have a place to move things that get interrupted? 

Then the third thing is, how do you look at your business so that you can pivot? How do you assess whether or not it needs a pivot, whether it’s still following its intention, following its form and structure, and really providing you what you need. So those are my three tips for helping you with the winds of change and to help them rise to the occasion and fly on the winds of change.