Building a successful business requires a strong foundation but more importantly, you have to understand how the different parts of the foundation interconnect.  

Pam Ivey shares how she struggled to create a solid foundation that would provide ongoing success while implementing multiple tactics without a clear strategy to support the different things she was doing.  Jane Garee talks about becoming a great Gig Master and then realizing going from gig to gig wasn’t a business that was foundationally sound.  Although both of them made good money, true growth and leverage from the business were difficult to achieve.

​In today’s episode, you will hear about:   

• [1:29] Why business foundations are the key to running your business like a CEO.
• [6:35] Why being great at getting and serving clients will keep you busy but not successful. 
• [10:57] Why being brave and having a clear vision is necessary for business success.
• [20:25] What is the difference between a solid strategy based on a clear vision and one that isn’t.
• [23:22] How to craft an effective message for a target audience following a marketing strategy.
• [27:38] What selling really is: serving people at the highest level possible.
• [29:39] How to build a successful operational team to reach business goals.

What are the eight foundational pillars to build a successful business?

1) Inner Game

What you think about on the inside is what shows up for you on the outside. Your mindset is everything in your success.

2-3) Branding + Messaging

The message communicated to your target audience through your products and your verbal and non-verbal communication messages that describe what you do and how you’re different from others.

4) Marketing

Building deeper, more meaningful relationships with people that want to buy your products and services. The ultimate goal is to create leads for sales conversations.

5) Sales

Selling is about discovering the prospect’s needs by asking them and actively listening, and then having a joint plan to help them achieve their needs better, faster and more cost-effectively than anyone else could help them.

6) Leadership + Team

To set and achieve challenging goals, take fast and decisive action when needed, and inspire others to perform at their highest level they can achieve.

7) Operations

Everything that happens within a company to keep it running and earning income. This includes things such as finance, systems and processes, and supply management.

Connect with us: www.instagram.com/flourishandgrowtoceo

https://www.facebook.com/groups/flourishandgrowtoceo

Determine if you're ready to grow your business and how strong your foundations truly are at: https://flourish.biz/quiz

EPISODE 3 TRANSCRIPTION

Pam: (00:00) You're listening to episode three of the Flourish and Grow to CEO podcast.

Pam: (00:26) Are you a lady boss making 50 to a hundred thousand in your business, and you're ready to break through that six figure barrier.

Jane: (00:34) Have you done a great job of creating a nice life as the ultimate gig master, but no, your inner CEO is calling you to greater Heights. You're in the right place. If you want to create and implement solid fundamentals in your business without sacrificing fun.

Pam: (00:48) I'm Pam Ivey, I'm certified in small business management and I concentrate in the areas of training and certifying real estate assistance, coaching and mentoring entrepreneurs in online business, marketing growth and profit acceleration. And I take men and women business owners aged 40 plus two bucket list destinations around the world for a month at a time to work, explore, and live in community.

Jane: (01:14) And I'm Jane, Garee known as the sales strategist for the non sales person. And I work with business owners who want to increase their conversion rate, shorten their sales cycle and have more impact and influence with the work they do all while having more fun with selling.

Pam: (01:29) Hey, welcome back everyone to Flourish and Grow to CEO. We're really glad that you've joined us today for this episode, because it's really important. What we're going to talk about really forms the basis of everything we do here at flourish. We're going to be taking a look at the eight essential business foundations that will allow you to build a successful and sustainable business that forms the basis for you to scale and grow, you know, become a CEO.

Jane: (01:58) So Pam, I am so excited to talk about this today because this really is it, this was kind of the genesis of you and I creating Flourish and Grow to CEO because what we're really going to talk about is interestingly enough, something that most other business owners don't talk about that much. And that's about the interaction and the integration of these eight foundational pillars. So a lot of people talk about each one of them or a mix of them, but it's really the interconnectedness that takes you from being a gig master to a CEO. So I can't wait to dive into this

Pam: (02:38) Exactly the gig master thing. So going from project to project and client to client, instead of really having an overall vision for your company and knowing where you want to go and how you're going to get there.

Jane: (02:51) Yeah. And you know, I've been 10 years in this industry and I used to do contract sales for some of the biggest names in the coaching industry. Everybody would know them if I said them. So we're kind of talking like eight, 10 years of strategy sessions for other people sitting in the seat and hearing the same things over and over from prospective clients. And it really amazed me how people would come in and want to invest in a certain thing. Usually something that was tactical without being able to see the bigger picture or without, and this is really key without realizing that they really were not ready for that particular thing or that particular program. And it was so funny to me because I started having these conversations where instead of selling something, I would give them kind of the lay of the land of listen, you don't need this right now.

Jane: (03:43) What you need is you need to figure this out, let me give this to you on a diagram. It just was so enlightening to them. And that's when I thought, you know what? This is a key problem in this industry is people rush out and they engage or they purchase something. And it's not that that thing is bad because usually the programs are really good. And it's not that the coach who’s selling it is doing them a disservice by wanting them to get involved in it because that's not the case either. The problem is everybody's investing out of order. That's actually a term I just created several years ago when I was having these conversations. So investing out of order and what that means is you go in and you're like, let me build a Facebook group. But when you're asked to articulate who your ideal client is, you don't really have the language for that.

Jane: (04:26) Or, Oh, I just bought a program on how to write a book, but you don't have any traction or a following. And you're not really even certain who your ideal client is or how they would come to find you or what your messaging is. So it was so frustrating for them and it really became a passion of mine to help people understand there's sort of an order to everything, but interconnectedness is what's really important. So not that I ended up selling some programs because some people were absolutely ready for it. And then that's a beautiful thing, but I just really started to think, you know, people need to know and have a better understanding of how to grow their business instead of random tactics here and random tactics there, we got to look at this as a whole game plan.

Pam: (05:13) Well, that's what we tend to do as business owners, especially in the beginning, you know, not even, especially in the beginning, I shouldn't really say that, but we just see that something isn't working or we're not getting enough clients. We're not getting enough traction with our marketing. So we keep jumping in with different tactics. I'm going to go try Facebook ads. I'm going to do webinars and try to do a launch strategy. I'm going to do this, that, and the other thing. But without looking at the whole picture, all of the different foundational pillars, as we're going to outline in a few minutes, as you talked about you invest at order or you're jumping in, and you're not having the ideal conversation with a potential client that you'd actually like to work with. You're kind of just what I call taking a shotgun approach to your marketing in particular, you're just spewing out a message and like a shotgun, they splay out in all different directions. You're just hoping that something catches. You're hoping that somebody hears it, that's going to want your services or products. So we have to really start looking at each of the individual pillars before we jump in with those tactics to know how they're going to push us forward to our actual goals.

Jane: (06:35) Yeah, absolutely. And if you're listening to this right now and you're thinking, Oh no, that's so me, of course, it's you it's me. It's Pam, it's you. Right. All of us. This is what happens. So it's not about, I don't want anybody to think you've done it incorrectly, or you have screwed it up. Or, you know what, none of that is what we're talking about, because let's face it. You got to get up and do something every day. When you're a business owner, when you're an entrepreneur, you just, you have to so big ops and high fives. If you've been getting up and pounding it out every day, whether you have a plan or not, your desire is there, you're trying to do something. And probably most of you have actually made a lot of headway with everything. So we're just here to kind of help tighten up the process at this point.

Jane: (07:17) So it isn't the rushing from gig to gig, to gig from paycheck to paycheck. And it's more of a strategy and it's more of you walking into the vision and the dream that you have for your business and then therefore your life. So, and like you said, Pam, this is completely ongoing. We're not sitting here going, Oh, we've totally messed with this. We get up every day and we look at our foundational pillars and they go, and I know we're not saying any of that at all. We're reviewing the foundational pillars because we know that the interaction and the interconnectedness is really, really important. Yeah.

Pam: (07:49) Exactly. I know a lot of entrepreneurs, myself included that would get up and I would think I have a mortgage and I need to put food on the table. So what I have to do today to make money, but I didn't really take a good look at where I wanted to take the business. It was kind of short-sighted at the same point necessary to just keep going day to day, right?

Jane: (08:13) It is completely necessary. It is completely necessary. And I always think of one of those jigsaw puzzles. And I think that's really what we do as business owners. We get up every day and we dumped the box out Monday morning and we've got all the pieces there on the table and we just start putting the pieces together. So what if we actually dumped the pieces out on the table and then turn the box lid over and said, here's the final vision? Here's the picture. This is what I'm trying to put together with the pieces. Now let me do the border first. Okay. Now let me focus over here, where there are blues or the ocean, or versus the sky or whatever. There's the box top there in front. And it's a guide so that you really have some kind of plan. And there's a little bit of order to things rather than just a mad scramble to put the pieces together.

Pam: (09:04) There she goes using your superpower again with analogies. I just love it. I think that really paints a picture.

Jane: (09:12) Beautiful. Yeah. Yeah. We're just here to metaphor super power. We're here to give you the box top so that if it were a race, let's say not that it is, but the person next to you dumped it out and goes desert, trying to put the pieces together and you dump yours out and we go, here's the box top. This is what you're aiming for. Here you go. You're probably going to come together without as much effort.

Pam: (09:34) Exactly. Well, you know, where we really, really start with our foundational pillars is between our ears really does all start between our ears. And what you think about on the inside is really what shows up for you on the outside. So your mindset is absolutely critical for success. You have to think you can do it, right?

Jane: (09:59) Yeah. That is some slime real estate going on there, right. Between the ears. And I, I really wish somebody would have pounded this into me when I was starting my business. I've always really, and I know Pam you too were students of self-development. We like that. However, there's a difference between the discipline of doing it and doing it on the weekend, or when you have a few moments in the evening or something, something that's just a bit more random. And I really wish somebody would have said to me, listen, you need to every day on a schedule, sit down and do self development work every single day, because that really is the difference between having a successful business and not, it's still not the tactics and the vision. And the, I mean, all of that is really important, but without what's going on in your head, being the lighthouse, being the guide, you're just going to be in a whole world of hurt.

Pam: (10:57) The author is unknown, but there's a couple of sentences here that really sums it all up. For me, having an optimistic mindset increases likelihood of formulating a winning perspective and achieving long-term success. People with a success mindset always seem to figure out how to make things happen, despite seemingly impossible odds. And I think that really sums things up.

Jane: (11:24) Okay. It does. Yes. A hundred percent. I love that. And I just got that vision of you and I on the beach in Australia, trying to figure out, tell this story. It's a little embarrassing. I think I'm going to tell it.

Pam: (11:37) It's fun.

Jane: (11:40) We set this up for everybody. So Pam and I, you know, we traveled together and we stayed for a month at a time that's Pam's company and veteran's life. And we were in Sydney. We were based in Sydney, but we took a weekend and we went with a few, the other women, we went up to the great barrier reef in the Outback and it was, it was so great. A couple of the women opted to go do this open water, kind of dive. And Pam and I were no way we're not doing that. We want to go sit on the beach and do some snorkelling and have some drinks or whatever. So off Pam and I go, we went, we went to the Island and we got to the beach part. And I said, Oh, after all that running around, first of all, Australia, so stinking hot.

Jane: (12:17) And whenever it is like a thousand degrees in Australia, I guess we were there in November and we're hot. We're sweaty. We've been running around this Island all day. We'd had a few passionfruit cocktails and it's just, I just want to go sit on the beach and chill out. I just want to relax. So we pay him, you and I walked over to the beach. We sat down. And first of all, there's no sand on those beaches. It's all these shells. So we're crunching, crunching, crunching on these shells. And we're already kind of starting to laugh because the shelter inside our shoes and it's not super silky sand. So we're hot, we're sweaty. We're crunching on these shelves. There's a lot of work just trying to get this to sit down and chill out and look at the waves. So we finally make it over there.

Jane: (13:03) We plopped down on the beach. I've got all my snorkelling gear, but Pam, I know you're going to remember this. We were fully clothed. We were an appropriate Island attire, but we had our clothes on, right? Like the undergone our bathing yards. We did not have our bathing suits on. And I just remember looking at you and say, I really want a snorkel, but I just turned my head and I saw her. The bathroom is to change and I don't want to get up and walk all the way over there and all the way back. It's just, I can't even, I mean, it was really hard to walk on all those shelves and the thought of crunching on those shells and, and the heat and everything. It just, no, so here's what we did. And this is to your point, Pam, about an optimistic mindset figures out how to make things work.

Jane: (13:50) And I'm going to add another bullet point on there for business owners, which is, and you also got to be brave. So there's a combination of figuring out how to make something work when plan a isn't, isn't an option, or it's not maybe your best option, or maybe it's just not the option that you want. That would be hauling it back to the bathroom changing and then doing another round down to the beach. It just was, no, it was going to take too long. So optimistic mindset to figure out how to make things happen. And then the other thing is being brave enough to take the road not traveled, right? Plan B. We're going to go with plan a. So this piece is important because I remember looking at you and saying, I'm so tired and worn out at this point. If I'm not going to go back to the bathroom and change into my bathing suit, I'm not going to be able to snorkel.

Jane: (14:36) Maybe I really will be okay with just sitting here on the beach at the great barrier reef in Australia, knowing that I was here without the snorkelling. And then you and I had that moment where we looked at each other and it was kind of like we had a mind-meld or something. And it was, why would we do that? We were there. That's really what we were going to, we needed to just figure out how to make this work. So we had really big towels, beach towels, and we were also kind of, I think we were wearing clothes that obviously were loose fitting because we were at a beach. And so what did we end up doing? We ended, okay, plug your ears. If this is like TMI, it's not going to get graphic or raunchy or anything, but PG version, we just, we shimmied out of our clothes with holding towels for each other and kind of changing underneath our clothes without, you know, nobody saw anything.

Jane: (15:28) Here's the point that actually took quite a bit of bravery because we're standing in the middle of a beach where everybody else is. And yeah, we did quarter kind of scooch over to some trees or whatever, but people could've seen us, people were milling about it. Wasn't private. And here we are now shimmying out of our clothes and putting on our bathing suits in the middle of the beach. And yeah, nobody saw anything PG version. That's great. But that was actually a really heroic effort, I think, because just, you know, for two women to stand on the middle of the beach, we're not 18 year old, gorgeous, you know, new bile...