This is a must-listen episode for any entrepreneur who is feeling overworked and overwhelmed! Tune in as Melissa Swink introduces her Make Space for More framework, which focuses on strategies for growing and scaling a business. She discusses the concept of making space for what we want and shares her own journey as an entrepreneur. Prepare to take notes as Melissa outlines the five-step framework, which includes redesigning your role, decluttering, simplifying and automating, building a team, and growing and scaling the company. She also highlights the consequences of not implementing these steps, such as feeling stuck, wearing too many hats, and experiencing a “feast and famine” cycle. Melissa also addresses common obstacles to growth and scaling. 

Key Highlights:

• The Make Space for More framework focuses on strategies for growing and scaling a business.
• This five-step framework includes redesigning your role, decluttering, simplifying and automating, building a team, and growing and scaling the company.
• Not implementing these steps can lead to feeling stuck, wearing too many hats, and experiencing a feast-and-famine cycle with sales.
• The most common obstacles to growth and scaling include fear of success and unwillingness to give up control.

About Melissa:

Melissa Swink, Founder & CEO of Melissa Swink & Co., has a team of virtual assistants who provide administrative and marketing support for small businesses and non-profits.

Since 2012, Melissa and her team have helped more than 100 businesses grow through the services they offer, and she is dedicated to helping entrepreneurs create profitable, scalable businesses they love.

Her work is all about doing what works (and eliminating what doesn’t) and driving real, measurable results. Visit www.melissaswink.com to learn more! 

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Hi, everyone, welcome to the Make Space For More podcast where we talk strategies for growing and scaling your business in a way that's authentic and aligned for you. I'm your host, Melissa Swink. And in this episode, we're going to unpack my make space for more framework, we're going to talk about what it is what it entails, what are some of the successes that I've achieved, and clients have achieved by implementing this framework, and maybe some of the reasons why it might not be easy to implement some of these things, and most importantly, how to overcome some of those pitfalls. But before we dive into all that, I have a question for you. What does more mean for you? For some people, it might be time freedom, some people it might be making more money might be more family time, more travel, more time to pursue hobbies and interests, whatever more means for you make space for more is the idea that in order to create and achieve what we want, we have to make the space for it.

So in the first episode, I talked about my journey as an entrepreneur, how my business has changed over the years. And in the early days of my business, I was a solopreneur, I was the one doing all of the work in my business was serving clients, also the work behind the scenes, and I had gotten to a point where I reached my own capacity. So in order for me to take on more clients, take on more projects, make more money, have more time freedom, I needed to pause and create that space for it. And we're going to talk about how I did that. But if you think about this from a house concept, just to kind of give you another perspective. Over time, when we live in a home, our closets start to get full basement attic, those things start to kind of accumulate over time. And so at a point, when we want to maybe make room for something else in our life, we have to pause, you're going to go through some of those things and declutter figure out what we're going to keep what we're going to donate what we're going to toss, and in a business, it can be very, very similar.

So before I dive into the framework, just wanted to share how I have used this framework with a client of mine in the past. So I have a dear friend who is a copywriter. And like many of us, she started her business, completely working on her own, she had a corporate job, she started doing this on the side eventually left the corporate job to pursue her business full time. And she found herself in a place where many of us do where she couldn't take on many additional clients or projects, she was getting to that point where she was starting to fill up. And most importantly, she and her husband were interested in starting a family. So she had this dilemma of, you know, how do I not only grow the business, but also structure it in a way that is conducive for having a family in the future. And so I'm happy to share with you today that she is thriving. She has a beautiful little girl. And she has a team that helps her support her clients and is able to continue growing her business. And most importantly, she is in complete control of her time as a new mom. So with the framework wanted to describe the five step process that I've discovered, that I use in my business that I have taught my clients, and others and can teach you more about how to implement this, and maybe where some of the pitfalls that you may encounter when trying to leverage these types of things. So taking a step back, I created this framework really for myself, and trying to figure out you know, how do I continue growing this business beyond me, in the early days, I couldn't afford a business coach or at least consistently. So I did a lot of reading and studying, and ultimately learned the time management strategies and business success habits of others and kind of dissected them down into how this apply to me. And so here's the five step framework for making space for more.

First of all, you're going to redesign your role. You right now, maybe in worker bee mode, where you're doing all the things in your business, we want to redesign and create your dream role so that you're doing more of the things that you love, and ultimately become the CEO of your growing and thriving company. So number two, we're going to declutter the things that just are no longer aligned with our goals and our vision for where we're headed. Step number three, we're gonna simplify and automate so that running our business becomes easier and less time consuming. Who doesn't want that? Step number four is building To not only to support you, but also support your clients, your customers, as well. And last but not least, we're ultimately going to grow and scale our company. And this is kind of like a lather, rinse, repeat sort of a process, because no matter where you're at today, you can work through these steps, and then a year from now revisit them again, because there's always opportunity to continue to grow and build upon where we are at today.

So what happens when people don't work through this process and create a scalable business model for themselves. So what I have found is that they stay stuck, they're working more hours than they want to, and they're doing kind of the same old, same old where maybe they might grow their business revenue wise, a little bit year over year, maybe they're raising their prices periodically, but ultimately, they're kind of stuck, they're stuck in the same model, they're stuck earning the same amount of money, you know, they kind of hit this income ceiling, because when it's all you, there's only so much that you can earn. Another thing that can happen, when people don't implement these steps to grow and scale their companies, they get really tired of wearing so many hats, okay, it's very difficult to say take a vacation, you know, because work stops, if you take a vacation, you may not be getting paid during that time, unless you are fortunate to have a business model that creates a lot of passive income for you. The reality is, is it can be very difficult to unplug. If there's nobody there to even support your clients or answer questions that come in when you're not there can be really hard to maintain that lifestyle that you want and have that time freedom that you probably wanted when you first created your business. Ultimately, you've created a job for yourself that you can't get out of. The other thing that can happen when we don't have businesses that are scalable, and we don't work through these steps to create them is we create a feast and famine cycle in our businesses. I know this is especially true for me, I've seen this with clients in the past, where you get so bogged down in busy doing the client work, the deliverables, the serving your customers on a day to day basis in your business. And then you kind of come up for air and you're like, Oh, I haven't marketed my business in months, I haven't done any new sales. And so when those projects wrap up, or those clients ultimately kind of move on in their journey, then you need to scramble and build back the business and replenish what you have just finished up. So the question is, is, you know, if it's if these are such great reasons to look at growing and scaling your business beyond you, why don't more of us do this. And we're going to dive deeper into some of the pitfalls and the limited beliefs, some of the subconscious programming, maybe some of the limitations that you see why you couldn't build the business in this way. We're gonna dive into all that, and most importantly, talk about overcoming them, but I want to give you a few samples here. So for one thing, we probably fear our own greatness. You know, we sometimes it's not so much of fear of failure, but a fear of success, like, oh, what happens if I do hit my revenue goal for next month, and then I can't maintain it, or what if I grow my business, and I onboard all these clients, and I let them down, I can't support them. We have these fears of failure. But then also the fear of success is what happens when I, you know, achieve that goal, then what the other thing is, is that sometimes, we're just unwilling to give up control and try something new. We're gonna dive into that in detail in the next episode as well. And also, we may not have the funds to invest in hiring team members, or maybe another, you know, $10 a month software is just one more thing that you need to pay for. So you're still kind of making do with, you know, the spreadsheet the document that you're using currently. So, with all of that being said, please tune in to our next episodes where we're going to talk about what holds us back from growing and scaling our businesses, how to break free and create a business that works for you. We're going to talk about some really simple solutions to the challenges that many business owners face when growing their businesses beyond themselves. So thank you so much for listening in and I'll see you in the next episode.