[00:00:36] Kc Rossi: Hello. Welcome. Welcome back to the show. I am so excited that we have this opportunity to connect on a weekly basis. I hope that this episode finds you with a smile on your face. Today, we're going to be talking about busting out of your comfort zone to access exponential business growth. Doesn't that sound good?
[00:00:58] All right. So [00:01:00] as entrepreneurs we've agreed to take on additional risks. And initial limitations, things like inconsistent income, no paid time off or health insurance, or retirement funding. And you could even add on a few things to that list. Now we've agreed to these things because of our deep desire for the rewards like freedom, unlimited potential, like being able to set our own hours.
[00:01:26] Take time off when we want to, or need to and have creative flexibility and sovereignty. So why is it, that many entrepreneurs get caught up in the trap of working in their business versus on their business. And we're going to talk about the difference, but this is really such a, an important distinguishing point because we work so very hard as entrepreneurs, many times we're putting in more hours, especially in the first, maybe 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 years, even until we get that [00:02:00] ramp up into the growth phase.
[00:02:02] But in the beginning, when we're building our business, we're putting a lot of hours in and we're getting caught in that trap of working in our business versus our business, which basically then we've just created a job for ourself. And I know that if you're here and you're listening to this, that is not
[00:02:23] your end goal, right? To just craft another job for yourself and feel like you're punching a clock and it's really becoming a nine to five or in some cases, a nine to nine. That's not why we crafted our business. So let's get into the differences between that. You've probably heard that phase before working in your business versus working on your business, but let's talk about some of the key differences.
[00:02:50] Working in your business basically can be described in one word. And that one word is maintenance. There are daily admin tasks [00:03:00] like email management posting on social media invoicing, sending newsletters, bookkeeping, organizing receipts, customer service, anything that has to do with formatting or even creating graphics.
[00:03:14] These tasks can and should be outsourced if you are a serious business owner, focused on growing your business. And again, I know as a podcast listener that you are, that's why you're here. It is so easy to get caught up in this lane. For a lot of different reasons, you could be caught up in this because you have the belief or mindset that you can't afford to bring on team.
[00:03:40] But I think a lot of times we get caught up in this zone because. It's our comfort zone. It doesn't usually stretch us. And again, we're not uncomfortable in this lane. We can plug into the to-do list with very little resistance because a lot of those tasks [00:04:00] become second nature. We also have a false sense of accomplishment.
[00:04:06] When we stay in this lane all day long, because we can zip through the list. And I don't know about you, but I love to cross stuff off a to-do list, just as much as the next entrepreneur, but in this case, it can leave you spinning your wheels exhausted at the end of the day. And broke. Because you haven't brought in new business or increase sales for the day, the week or the month.
[00:04:32] Now in the beginning, I tried to do everything by myself and maybe you can relate and there were certain thoughts. And again, this is all mindset. It's just easier. Or by the time I train someone to accomplish it, the way that I want it done, I could just do it myself and a slew of other reasonings come in.
[00:04:53] Now, once I started prioritizing my self-care, because this was really not only a growth mindset, [00:05:00] a transition that had to happen, but it was also about looking at my self-care and setting boundaries and focusing on having a CEO mindset. And then things started to. I brought in someone to edit my podcast and hired a virtual assistant.
[00:05:17] And I outsource things that have like heavy duty graphics to it that I can't whip off easily. And things like that. What I used to spend the first hour of my day on was things like posting on Facebook and Instagram heading into my inbox, very first thing and returning emails, or even shifting into some of the service work that I was doing for my clients, more of the implementation things that were non coaching related.
[00:05:46] And here's the interesting thing when I decided to shift into working on my business and bringing in team to support me with some of those maintenance day-to-day admin [00:06:00] tasks. Now that beginning part of my day, it is actually my most coveted time and I really spent it on content creation and big picture strategy thinking, which has been really a total shift. And it took a little bit of time because, we are what we repeatedly do. And when we stay in our comfort zone, it's like I said, it's comfy and we just plug in and that becomes the habit. So we're really talking about habit shifting, upleveling, our mindset and time management in this episode, because that commitment to busting out of your comfort zone. That is really when you're going to start to see these massive shifts, not just like the little by little day by day stuff, because actually that concept of little by little day by day, that is really your maintenance mindset. Just the day in, day out tasks that you have to deal with, but these exponential growths [00:07:00] accelerated business growth.
[00:07:01] This is when we can make quantum leaps. And this is also the kind of flip side of the coin of working in your business and working on your business, the working in your business is that little by little day by day. And I used to say that often, I and fact like that almost was my mantra. And I think in a way it goes back to that false sense of security that we're getting things done.
[00:07:25] And then. We don't really have to push and there is, room for both, but if you really want those quantum leaps, if you really want to have that accelerated growth, that is the other side of the coin, my friend. And that is the CEO mindset that is this pro level of time management. And that is working on your business, not in your business.
[00:07:50] All right. One of the things that, you know, as you start to be conscious of this, because there's a lot of different layers here. We can break it down into two categories and I'm [00:08:00] going to summarize that at the end, but there's like levels and shades of gray, if you will. It's not a very black and white thing, and sometimes we can get trapped in the middle.
[00:08:10] And those middle things are one level up from general secretarial duties and they include tasks like project management, website development, copywriting, setting up automation. Now those sound much chunkier than things like email management or invoicing. However, Even though this section is worthwhile and certainly the tasks are important to the business, but they're not necessarily where you should be spending your time, because these can also be delegated to someone on your team so that you can stay in your zone of genius.
[00:08:50] So that is like moving up that ladder of pro level consciousness and time management. Now you may be thinking, so what do I work on [00:09:00] then? And here's the thing. The growth categories include everything that is income generating. So relationship building, content creation, anything that's strategic or big picture thinking.
[00:09:14] This is where your innovation comes in, where your top level ideas and expansion come in. Once you shift from task based time suckers, right? Anything, that's like task based. To this manifestation space, it will cause you to stretch and it will take you from things that you could do in your sleep, right?
[00:09:39] And put you and your courage to the test. And there are crucial things necessary if you want to grow your business and become a category of one and truly harness the power within you to make a difference. A real difference and projects that fall into working on your business include [00:10:00] developing presentations, webinars, programs, and digital offerings.
[00:10:05] They include having strategy sessions or breakthrough sessions or discovery calls that initial meeting that face-to-face, or that zoom call with perspective clients. It includes anything that's sales generating. Like writing a sales page, right? So a little bit different than general social media posts content, because now we're really getting into the minds of our prospective client.
[00:10:31] It includes building a launch campaign. It can include anything that establishes you as a thought leader. And that can be like PR related activities, like writing an article for a magazine or being featured as a TV spot guest, being a guest expert or appearing in a private Facebook group or someone else's course.
[00:10:54] So you can start to see these massive differences. [00:11:00] And the other piece that I want to make sure to put in there is networking and orchestrating collaborations because they also fall into these high level growth tasks. You can start to see it's really about preeminence. It's about connection. It's about building relationships.
[00:11:18] When you are working on your business. Another way to distinguish these lanes of working in your business and working on your business. Is to think about the working in your business as things that deal with the day to day, the immediate things at hand. So these are the things that are like here today, gone tomorrow, or they're very repetitive.
[00:11:43] Like you're always going to have inbox to manage, right? You're always going to have receipts to organize. You're always going to have invoicing to do and all of that type of things. So there's little impact on the business growth and there's like little connection to your overall [00:12:00] mission and vision working on your business are things that are the lifeblood of your brand.
[00:12:07] They are the things that will have the biggest impact on your clients and in turn your bottom line. This is what gives your business fuel and longevity. They're the things that are also going to make it fun and sustainable because our goal is to be profitable powerhouses. And in order to do that, we have to commit to focusing on working on our business, to release the safety net of using our precious time on tasks that can be outsourced.
[00:12:37] I want to take a minute to look at this through another lens. I really enjoy the work of Stephen Covey. He's written several books, but specifically something that ties into what we're talking about today is his time management matrix. And basically he breaks it down. If you're visual, like I am, you can actually.
[00:12:59] [00:13:00] A little quick sketch for yourself that I'll have four blocks in it. So you're just putting two blocks on the top and two blocks underneath on the bottom. And when we look at the upper left quadrant, we're looking at. Urgent and important. And these can feel urgent. Like even the word urgent is to me, I think about alarms and notifications and these like signals, right?
[00:13:27] There's this sense of urgency. Our gut and our nervous system is oh, we got to do it. We got do it. And they can be things like putting out daily fires or crisis management or dealing with conflict. So as business owners, we're going to have some of these in our life in our day that they're important, and they're urgent because they really need to happen though.
[00:13:50] Maybe you have a delivery truck coming. If you're a brick and mortar or, maybe you have a pressing quick call with one of your clients that [00:14:00] needs, an immediate connection with you. Whatever those are the third, like these immediate urgencies. But when we look at the following quadrant right underneath.
[00:14:12] That is the urgent and not important. And that's things like busy work and things that are not necessarily your emergency. I see this a lot with owners that get caught up with their employees, personal life drama, they don't have that boundary. They take ownership of things that don't belong to them, but eat up their precious time, their decision-making chi right.
[00:14:36] And take them away that they're they're just distractions. They're urgent, but not important. And they're not necessarily your urgency. So really important to make that distinguish. And you're going to conserve so much energy when you start to see the difference and detach from things that are not your emergency.
[00:14:56] So when we move over one, and this is on the bottom, [00:15:00] it, the are the things that are not important, not urgent. And we can easily fall into this category. And I see this often and you hear people talking about. Falling down the rabbit hole, losing a lot of hours from mindlessly scrolling on social media, but it can also be a category that is known to be called creative avoidance.
[00:15:23] And that really is like when we're endlessly. Tweaking our meme. And we do things in this category to minimize stress, but also to avoid, they are tasks that are not important and not urgent, but they give our mind a little bit of a release and we can lose a lot of time. When you go up one.
[00:15:46] So you're looking at the top quadrant now in this section where it's not urgent, but it's important. And this is where we want to be focusing our time and energy on things like planning, considering [00:16:00] the macro, right? That big picture, critical thinking future casting. Anything that has to do with development, this area is where you are leaning in.
[00:16:11] To your mission and vision and tapping into your core values. This area is gold. This area is where we leave a legacy and we start to focus on things that are going to help us build generational wealth. So very important and exciting. So I don't know about you, but are you ready to start optimizing your schedule?
[00:16:36] And start focusing on spending time on things that matter, and that really move the needle. I am like I have both hands raised. I get really excited when I can visualize these differences. And I think that, this isn't one and done work. This is even though we're mindful, we have to have a daily consciousness in order to create new habits.
[00:16:59] And in order [00:17:00] to practice. These principles, because one just listening to the principles and having them click that's great. But if we don't put it into our daily schedule and have these shifts so we can experience the results, then why bother? I always say that taking in information without actually putting in implementation is a waste of time.
[00:17:27] So one of the things here. I want to point out, which I'm sure you already know, but when we're making this shift, it will require discipline. It will require a mindset shift. It will require daily patience and practice and pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. Are you in? I want to be a place that holds space for female leaders and their unlimited potential, their unlimited success.
[00:17:57] And as always to continue the [00:18:00] conversation you can head to my private Facebook group. By the same name, Women Developing Brilliance, because there you will connect with other like-minds and big hearts, women running soul led businesses. I'll make sure to drop the link in the show notes so you can connect.
[00:18:17] All right. So to recap, we have two basic lanes. And I want to pause here for a minute. I actually changed locations because this morning I was recording at my office and there was so much road noise that I actually had to pack everything up, including my blue Yeti microphone and bring it over to my house where I can close the windows and have a lot of quiet.
[00:18:40] And I'm looking out my front door here and I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. There is almost 20 turkeys, beautiful fat turkeys sitting outside of my window. And this has been such a joy this season. I have had so much Turkey [00:19:00] medicine coming into my daily life, and I really feel that symbolism of flourishing and nurturing and being patient to harvest abundance and just having this perseverance is such an indicator for being an entrepreneur and such a beautiful reminder.
[00:19:21] So I wanted to bring that Turkey medicine in because it is right literally in front of my face as I am recording this for you. So I hope you get a transference of that inspiration and motivation that the turkeys continue to share with us. So I wanted to stop and have a little digression there cause I think it's cool.
[00:19:41] All right. So to recap, we have two basic lanes we have working in your business. That includes day-to-day maintenance, admin tasks that of course have to be done, but they don't have to be done by you. These are things that you can and should outsource. And then we have the working on [00:20:00] your business tasks that focus on growth, income generating activities, big picture business development, things that only you,
[00:20:11] as the visionary leader and CEO that you are can take care of. Now, we don't want to outsource these items because we are the brand, the heart and the soul of our company. And these things need our fingerprint on them because people are attracted to our energy and enthusiasm. Now here's actually another way to determine if you're in the right zone. Is your individual energy
[00:20:39] Really a part of what you're doing. Is it in there somewhere? Now, if you're formatting a blog or sending out an invoice, those are very black and white tasks. You don't really feel a vibe because those are more nuts and bolts and admin things. However, on the flip side, giving something like a [00:21:00] speech, going to a networking event or building collaborations in order to be successful, has to have our fingerprint on it. It has to have your Moxie, your energy, your enthusiasm behind it, because this is where your brilliance shines. So that's another really quick litmus test to see if you are focusing your time and energy in the right zone. So my friend, I hope this helps you. I hope you took a few notes because this is about busting out of your comfort zone.
[00:21:33] It's about committing to shedding the old ways of staying in the hourly task zone and expanding into high level pro time management. Because when you hover here, when you hover in this, working on your business stage, This is where you're going to see exponential growth in your business. It's also going to help you push out of [00:22:00] your comfort zone, which to me is all about personal development.
[00:22:04] It's about honing your process, honing your system, expanding your mind, putting in that growth mindset. Those are the element. That are going to shift you from trying to make a living, to having affluent abundance in all areas of your life and business. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did head over to lovethepodcast.com/brilliance, I would love to hear from you and your feedback about the show until next week, my friend breathe joy.
