Imagine if there was a way to get back a whole day of your busy week. That’s the goal of Sarah Greener, a specialist in helping women business owners find ways to focus on their high-creative tasks instead of getting bogged down with the minutia of running a business. She joined me in a fruitful conversation that covered a range of issues related to time management, including:

• SOPs – standard operating procedures and how they can transform your work and home life
• Starting from your goals and mapping your activities to serve them
• How business systems are like adult lego – and building with them can lead to amazing results
• Answering the question: can you have too many systems; or too much automation?

I think most expertise-based service providers who have or plan to become entrepreneurs need to transition from working entirely in their zone of genius without losing that creative spark. Listen to this podcast for some important insights. If you are ready to make that transition and you need to work out the SOPs for your Intellectual Property, I’m your gal. Contact me to discuss scaling your business with your IP assets.

Connect with Erin and find the resources mentioned in this episode at hourlytoexit.com/podcast.

Erin's LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erinaustin/

Think Beyond IP YouTube Page: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVztXnDYnZ83oIb-EGX9IGA/videos

Music credit: Yes She Can by Tiny Music

A Team Dklutr production

Hello ladies.

Welcome to the Hourly to Exit podcast.

I am very excited for my guest

today.

Welcome, Sarah.

Hi.

It's so good to be here, Erin.

lots to talk about.

We know we love to talk about SOPs here and processes and making sure we're

building a business that can scale.

So this is gonna be a great episode for the audience.

But before we get started, will you introduce.

Yeah.

Kda,

I'm Sarah Greener, and, I'm from all the way down here in New Zealand.

I feel like I'm a long way from Erin.

I, work with, female business owners, all over New Zealand, Australia,

and throughout the states who are way too busy and overwhelmed

to get them back a day a week.

and the way that we do that is through focusing on how they're using their

time, which ultimately leads into what we're gonna be chatting about today.

And we do something called a success map, which gets the.

From what you think your business looks like to what it's actually

operating like, we close that gap so that you can run your business.

It running you.

and you can have other people help you do that as well.

Ah, very, very, very important.

So I will say, there is a beautiful fixture window behind Sarah, where I

can see how green it is where she is.

And I have been to New Zealand, years ago, and did a, a walk, what is it called?

I think I was over.

Is it Milford?

Is that New Zealand?

Yeah.

Did you get Milford?

Yes.

Yes.

It sounds beautiful.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right down at the bottom of the south island.

And it rained the entire time.

Yeah.

It rain, it's three nights, And camping they told you do not eat

in your tent at the campgrounds.

Well, it was this one night.

It was pouring rain.

We're like, we're gotta like eat.

So we eat the, in the tent.

And so what happens in comes the mice and they're just hanging out

like, doesn't matter apparently, how hard it's rain waiting for you to

even eat a cracker inside of your tent, . And so it's scrambling around.

And of course, you know, I'm a light sleeper.

My son's, father's, he's a man.

He sleeps through anything . So I am like, oh my God.

And it would run up the side of the tent till it got no gravity,

right it back down on me, right up the side of the tent, back on me.

And so we finally woke him up and we got the thing out of the 10.

but beautiful, like otherworldly beautiful.

it's just unreal.

we would get to a place where we were above the clouds . And so we're

like, oh my God, this is so gorgeous.

What a beautiful place you live.

Milford's amazing.

you can actually do a boat cruise down there in the sounds, and they actually say

it's actually better when the weather's not good because you get all more.

Waterfalls and if the wind's blowing, the waterfalls

can actually turn around and go back up and things like that.

It's just incredible down there.

did you say the waterfalls Go back up.

Because the wind gets underneath them and so they'll come if it's really windy.

So the waterfalls are coming down on the side of the sound and then

it turns them and you'll see them.

It's amazing.

wow.

Okay.

I missed that . Yeah.

Come back.

You'll love it.

To the top, the north At the time I lived in la so it wasn't quite as far

as a journey to get there so far, but not quite as far as from the east.

We'll, we'll definitely do that.

So tell me about your typical client and what pains are they feeling when they go?

I gotta go talk to Sarah.

so my typical client is me a decade ago, they tend to be between 30 and 50 women

who have got out into their own business.

In my world, generally they have some physical component, so they

either have offices or a, shopfront of some description, and they.

Busy building their business, and they think that someday things will get better.

If they just work a little bit harder and a little bit longer and

they get some more customers, things will get better in the future.

it's not until we kind of shine a light on the fact that it's just all the hours.

They're working so many hours, it's not aligned with the life they really want.

So they got.

Into business, much like you and I probably for, some freedom, for some

flexibility for the ability to do the things that mattered to them.

And all of a sudden this business kind of turned into this monster

that started eating their whole life, So, they're feeling overwhelmed.

They're feeling stressed when they're at work.

They're feeling guilty for not being at home with their children.

They're feeling guilty for not being at work.

maybe they've got some team members, but they feel like they

are constantly fighting fire.

That somebody else started.

they're just exhausted from doing that all the time.

And they know there's a better way and their business is

working, it's making money.

but it feels really hard.

so we are looking to make that simpler for them.

Yeah.

I'm sure that everyone in this audience can relate to that.

this is an audience of mostly service-based businesses, of experts,

and so there's a unique challenge to scaling the service-based business.

I am my avatar of someone who comes outta corporate and basically does

what they were doing in corporate, but on my own and using my expertise.

You start out selling your time and just doing things, you know, cuz it's what

you know, and you're not really thinking about creating systems, how to scale

this thing until you hit that wall.

what are the special issues that a service-based business may have

in trying to look at these issues?

so I think it's even more significant a service-based business because the thing.

Start off selling is their time.

And particularly if you've come out of that kind of corporate world where

you are paid by the hour and you charge by the hour, and so everything

in your head is done by the hour, and that's the way you position

yourself when you first get started.

And the challenge with that is generally there's a

gap between what you're charging and the value that you're creating.

it also means that, previously if you were working for someone

else, there was probably a lot.

less Not chargeable work that you had to do.

small confession.

I was an accountant back in my twenties and we used to do the little six minute,

time sheets to charge our timeout.

Yeah, that's nightmare stuff.

Thanks . There's tech for that now.

Thank goodness.

I used to be in that world and so everything was charged, every six minutes

was charged to a client in your own business, there's a whole lot of stuff

to do that's not chargeable to a client.

And so you have to make sure that First and foremost, that's really slick because.

You can't charge that time out to anyone, so you don't wanna

spend a lot of time on it.

So we talk about it in terms of future creators and future Steelers, and so

reconciling your accounts and sending invoices while you have to do them.

they're gonna steal your future if you spend too much time doing them because

you're not charging for that time.

And then there also gets to that point where people start to question

the rate at which you're charging, they can't perceive how they could

possibly pay you $500 an hour where they're only earning X amount an hour.

And so you have to start looking at how do I package this up and

look at a way that I can value.

The value rather than the time that I'm putting in, I can value the

outcome I'm getting rather than how long it takes me to get it.

And then you can start thinking about how do I get this outcome

smarter so that I can deliver the outcome with less of me in it.

And that's gonna grow the business for you.

Right.

And the cool thing about service is there's lots of

ways to do it, which is great.

That is so true.

Yeah.

that cap on how much.

Charge your time for, there's self-improvement guy here,

like a coach to the stars.

It's called Tony Robbins.

And I think he charges like a million blocks to be his client.

You know, like most of us don't get to charge a million bucks for our services.

there's going to be a cap period and so you're going to hit that wall and

you're going to have to figure out a way to decouple your income from your time

if you ever wanna get past that cap.

For sure.

Yeah, it's gonna tap you out and it's tiring.

So I've been there, so I didn't come from that world, or I've come from

the world of running a small business, a physical business in tourism.

But then I've come into this service world as a coach, and that's where I started.

I would give you x number of hours of coaching for X number of dollars.

it's a package and, I got to the point where I was coaching 35 hours a week.

Mm-hmm.

, which is intense.

Yeah, and then I still had to do all the business stuff around and I was

like, oh, hang on, I'm going back to doing what I was doing before but worse

and I'm teaching people not to do this.

And so that's when you have to start thinking about, okay,

how am I gonna do this smarter?

Cuz you actually tap out your ability at some point to do a good

job and build the life you want.

Yeah,

I you don't wanna build a job for yourself without Ben.

Call it a job without benefits.

if we're here in the us you the employment tax is paid, the social

security paid insurance here, we got it.

Have a job to get.

through the insurance you gotta do all the, sales and the, development and all

these things and you're still getting, basically, cuz we have in our head, we

talked, you mentioned this, that replacing that salary that we got from our employer,

but we're putting in way more than we were to get that salary and we were in.

yeah, and I think there's also that gap, I think

when you're an employee, you don't recognize that actually the cost of

an employee is more so in New Zealand, we add 20 to 25% to every salary to

say that's actually the real cost.

Mm-hmm.

and the real benefit to the employee because we pay all those taxes.

For them.

Right.

Same thing in the states, All those extra bits on top that you don't see

in your physical bank account, but someone's paying for you somewhere.

Right?

Right.

so you actually have to go not just your salary, but all those benefits too.

And you have to think about what's the market rate for all

the jobs I'm doing in my business?

Cause in the other business you were working in, someone was

getting paid to do the marketing.

Mm-hmm.

. Mm-hmm.

getting paid for the accountant.

Someone's getting paid to do that.

So to build a business is actually sustainable.

You actually need to get paid a market rate for all those roles.

Cause otherwise you can't outsource them to someone else.

Mm-hmm.

. Erin Austin: Well that comes to the

So tell us about that and how we use SOPs to help us not be Yeah, absolutely.

And so I think that's, it's across both your, life

and your business, Al Trades is, I've gotta wear all the hats for.

all of the roles.

And so what we've just talked about there is for someone else, you were a

service provider who was the lawyer or the accountant or the insert line here.

Mm-hmm.

. What you didn't do was be the marketing and the sales department

and the accounting department and the cleaner and the administrator

and the insert things here.

the fix the printer, person if the printer's not working.

So that's that Jill of all trades.

When you start out, you get really good at swapping those hat.

You get really good at being all things to all people, but you

can't do that for a long time.

. And so you have to stop being the Jill of all trades and you have to start

being the master of all of them, which means I have to know enough about

them to ask really good questions.

I have to have good processes so I can say, Hey, have you done them the

way I want them done in my business.

and then you have to outsource them to other people and hold

them accountable to that piece.

And until you stop being Jill, you are really gonna find yourself

stretched very thin, and you're not gonna be able to grow the revenue of

your business in the way you could.

If you start thinking about where are the low value tasks in my business

that I can outsource to someone?

Yeah, absolutely.

There is a coach here in the us, Natalie Al, who always says, hire

as much help as you can afford.

And that applies both internally in the business and at home.

Cuz for a lot of women, we are both the c e o of our businesses and the

c e o of our homes, And we are, gill of all trades of our businesses,

and Jill of all trades of our homes.

for me as a solopreneur, if I have a to-do list, which includes, getting

something for the dog or dealing with something for the house or

dealing something for a client or getting something to my accountant,

these are all on my to-do lists.

the 24 hours in the day they gotta get done.

And there's as much value from me to outsource, someone to help.

Around the house.

Yeah.

In the yard, as helping in the business.

So we shouldn't ignore all areas of our lives that we

can benefit from outsourcing.

Oh,

absolutely.

I think we forget the overwhelm comes from the whole picture of what's

going on every day in your life.

It doesn't come from, people go, I'm so overwhelmed by my business.

I'm like, oh, I'm interested about that and let's have a conversation, but I

wanna know what's going on at home.

Like, who runs your house?

They're like, oh, my husband's really good, or My partner's really good.

He vacuums, Okay, cool.

But if he's doing the task, who's doing the management?

The logistics.

They're making sure the vacuum cleaner has been empty.

They're making sure the vacuum cleaner's got bags in it.

you talked about something for the dog and something for the cat.

We talk about it as the second shift.

So when we set up a home, sometimes we set it up on our own and

then maybe we get a partner and maybe we get some small people.

I have a small person And we always say, the small person

that lives in my house rent free.

So these people, oh yes, come.

, they come and they form part of your home and they create workload in your home.

. And if they're not sharing in that workload, then that

workload all lands on one person.

And I think I saw this article once about if you paid someone to do all

the jobs that, housewife does, it's like hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

. And for me it's more about the mental load piece.

So when you look at the statistics that say across the world something like 12%

of women owned businesses only earn more than a hundred thousand dollars a year,

that statistic scares the hell out of me.

But it also.

Sense because if the women are still, and we are still in general

carrying that load of free work that, where does everyone need to be?

When are exams, when are birthday parties?

When does the dog need to go to the vet?

When does, registrations on cars.

Insurance needs to be renewed.

If you are carrying all that load, it's like managing a whole nother organization.

and so it's definitely.

Have that conversation with our clients and we are talking about how do we share

the second shift, not just the tasks of it, but the mental load as well.

Because that's where the overwhelm comes from, is how much am I keeping up here?

And so, you talk about outsourcing in your house, we have like

standard operating procedures.

Around the house for things so that we don't think about them.

and we don't call them SOPs, but there's a system, our food

order is just on autopilot.

It gets ordered every week.

There's a system when you use the last thing, you add it to the shopping list

so that it can be processed each week to get the online shopping to come through.

keys live in the same place.

it seems like ridiculous things, ridiculously small things.

I wash my hair on the same day every week.

But not thinking about that mental load anymore actually helps.

Yeah, and that's why SOPs are so important in your business because instead of

carrying it around up here with, I don't know, 60 to 80,000 other thoughts.

Yes.

Now you don't have to concentrate on it, and your brain is free to be more

creative with the solutions you're coming out with your clients and bring more

humanity to what you're doing because you're not in the detail of what needs to

be done every day, both at home and at.

This might be controversial.

I'm just thinking as you, mentioned this, Steve Jobs, Barack Obama,

I think you mean Mark Zuckerberg.

They're known for like, wearing basically the same thing all the

time so that they don't have Yeah, the mental load of, chosen what?

Would women benefit from reducing the variety of the things that we wear?

And

yeah, so this is a really interesting one.

So it's something that I used to spend a lot of mental energy on in the morning.

and again, it's not something everyone's gonna be able to do, but in the end,

I went and paid a stylist and she put together my clothes and I literal.

I have the S, so P for what to Wear.

I have a laminated book, I love it, of my outfits.

And I go, what am I doing today?

And I pick it up and I go, I'm gonna wear that.

And then I go, those shoes, those pants that top, that jacket, I think there's

a freedom of expression in our clothes.

She stands here in a bright pink dress, and so I don't wanna take the

playfulness, the fun out of, the clothes that I wear, but I do get into a bit

of a rhythm, like when I travel away.

Like this is my Monday outfit, this is my Tuesday outfit, this is my Wednesday.

And.

I don't worry too much about the fact that people have seen me in

the same thing all the time, because I look at that and go, well, if it

works for them, it works for me.

I mean, like how many, blue suits that he had, like, it felt like

almost the same outfit all the time and nobody went, oh, that's not okay.

Like, No one does.

Why does it matter?

Yeah.

And I think, yeah, absolutely.

Mm-hmm.

. So you work with clients not just on their businesses, but also kind of

holistically do you describe yourself as a business coach, a lifestyle coach?

how do you mentor, how do you describe yourself?

I talk about being a business coach because people come to

me because they think all their problems are with their business.

and what I've learned about myself and what I know about clients now is that

my life and my business are intertwined because I am an owner operator business.

even still in our tourism business that I don't do much day to day,

I'm still part of that business.

And so I know that how I'm showing up and what's going on

for me outside of work mm-hmm.

is just.

important is what's going on in work.

And actually the things that I've done on myself and for outside of work have

actually been at least as impactful as the changes I've made in my business.

Because if I'm not sleeping well, if I'm not drinking well, if I'm not,

eating well, I'm not exercising and, looking after myself, then I show up

half as well, at least in my business.

and that was kind of my journey.

I was working all the hours I.

Drinking lots of caffeine during the day and then, a few glass of

wine to get to sleep at night.

I didn't have time to exercise and I'd go to bed at 11, I'd be up at

four 30 and did all those things.

and it showed up in the business.

showed up in the financial results.

It showed up in the way my team, engaged with me.

It showed up in how suppliers engaged with me.

when you start out, you're like, it's all of them.

And then when you start really looking, you're like, oh, it's the woman in the

mirror and I've gotta do some work on me.

And so for me, life first, business second.

And so now we look at what do you want outta life for

this chapter because mm-hmm.

. 20 year old Sarah wanted different things from 30 year

old Sarah from 40 year old Sarah.

Right.

Totally different chapters.

and so what do I want for this chapter of life and how is

my business gonna serve that?

Because I think, we're not all out here hustling and grinding to get to the

next level of our career necessarily.

We're not all hustling, grinding to have millions of dollars and.

Porsche, Ferrari or a fancy house, and if you're into those things, that's awesome.

But for me, it's all about having, building a good life for me and my family.

It's about making sure I can have choices with my child's education, choices to

travel, freedom for me to be at school for assemblies and talent shows, and,

that's why I'm building my life and that's what success looks like for me.

And so I need.

, decide what that looks like there first, and then build the business to serve that.

Because otherwise business, will eat as much time as you give it, just like

it eats as much money as you give it.

Right?

Yeah.

I love that.

You know, one, one of my, missions with this podcast, with my business

is to help women build more wealth and so that they can, because women

do those things, that they take care of their families with their money.

I'm not saying that there aren't women who don't.

Build rocket shifts with their money , but most of them wanna give it away

to great causes or to, support the people that they care about, about

their families, about their communities.

and that's why it's so important to me to help women.

but when we talk about, legacy, I'm not talking about like later when

you're dying, what you leave behind, but it's what you do every day,

all the good things that you do.

For your family, for your community every day.

And so when we think about that as the driver of our businesses, hopefully when

we think about increasing our income, increasing our wealth, we're thinking

about it and in light of generosity about all the good I can do with this, instead

of feeling like, I'm just being greedy.

Cuz it's just not, it's really about all the good that you can do.

Yeah, you can't get broke enough to help broke people.

and I can't think who I heard that from, but it's a great saying.

Mm-hmm.

I can't get broke enough to help broke people, but when I've got

financial freedom, generally I'm getting some time freedom if I'm smart

about building out those systems.

Right.

and then I can give.

Back.

some of the things we've been able to do and give back to our community

have been huge because of that.

Mm-hmm.

my husband's a volunteer firefighter here in New Zealand, without our

businesses he wouldn't be able to do that.

We've got, some community groups that are bringing back the bird life to where we

live, that we can be involved in that.

Probably wouldn't have been an option if we'd been working for

someone else in the same way.

So I totally agree with that.

And I don't know a client in my program that isn't really passionate about giving

back, in fact, sometimes so much so that they're giving too much of themselves to

everyone else, and we just have to bring it back for a little bit and get them

really focused on what they're doing.

To look after them first and then they can go and give again.

Yeah.

but that generosity is definitely a theme.

I see.

Certainly through my clients.

I'm not gonna assume that every woman's like that, but certainly

through the people that I work with and I connect with, that's

definitely where they want to go.

and it seems to be in general more about experiences than things as well would be.

The other thing I would say is they're looking to build

experiences for the people they.

and the people they wanna have an impact on, not necessarily

the next house or the next car.

that's probably another theme that we see.

Right.

Excellent.

So, speaking of which, you know, this podcast is hourly, the exit.

And so we like to help women build businesses that hopefully

they can sell someday.

And part of that is building exclusivity into their business.

What do they have that exclusive to them and having predictable

income, like how are they setting up systems so that someone who bought

their business could run it and be even more profitable with it?

So where do SOPs fit into that early to exit journey?

I would like to say that they are very early on in the journey.

I would like to say that if you start thinking about it from day

one, it's gonna be much easier.

Most of us don't.

We certainly just winged it for probably five or six years before

we even started thinking about putting processes in, which.

brings with it all sorts of challenges.

the analogy I always use is that generally what happens is people go,

I'm gonna build this really cool s o p, or we talk about it in terms of

systems and they see a really cool piece of technology, the software

that is really good for their industry or their service that they provide.

And they go, I'm so excited, it's gonna fix all my system problems.

And they jump into it and they start building out, bits of a system inside

this tech and then they go, The text crap doesn't do everything I want

it to do , I said this so often.

Did it myself.

And then I realized that we would never, ever work with a builder

who said, oh, you know what?

I've built loads of houses.

We don't need any plans.

We just need like a floor and some walls and a roof.

You'd be like, no, no, no, no, no.

We're gonna do a design and a plan.

I wanna see some paper with a plan on it first.

In our businesses we go.

We're gonna whack up the foundations of our business without ever thinking

about it and getting it down on paper.

So true.

And so the very first place I wanna know is I wanna know what's in your head

about what are all the systems in your business, and I want you to get them

out of there and down onto what I call the success map of, here are all the

areas of your business and what are all the systems that make up those areas.

So what are the systems that make up your sales process?

What are the systems that make up the experience people have with you?

What are the systems that make up.

You getting paid what are the systems that make up you being compliance, doing the

tax thing, doing the health and safety, whatever it is that wherever you are

in the world you have to comply with.

and once you've got that down on paper, then we can start to

think about it in step by step and we can build each system out.

Again, it's my mom brain and we have a lot of Lego in our house, but if you think

about like Lego, when it comes, I think about your business, like the box of Lego

that's next door in my daughter's room.

She's pulled everything out.

She's built the original thing.

Mm-hmm.

, and now we have this box full of different colored pieces and mm-hmm.

. Wheels and stuff and it's all shook together.

And every now and then she brings me one of the books and

I'm like, inside I die a little.

Cuz she's got the most extravagant castle or the most extravagant

boat or whatever that she wants.

She's like, can we build this mom?

And I'm looking at the box of everything going, oh God, how are we ever gonna

put it back together like that.

And that's kind of where you've got to in your business.

And so you need to go back that step and go, Hey, I've got a.

Of what I want my business to look like when it's systemized.

And then we're gonna put all the pieces for each system into kind of a little bag.

You know when you shake out the big box of Lego and it goes step one, here's the

bag of Lego, and you open it up and you just put those pieces together, that's

what we're doing with your business.

And if you start there by doing the,.

the.

Systems that cost you the most time or the most money or cause you the

most frustration in your business.

Mm-hmm.

. So there's things where things are going wrong most often.

Then you can start there and slowly build your whole business out.

But you've gotta have the plan first before you start building.

Cause otherwise you're just gonna get frustrated with the piece of technology

or the human being that's doing it for you cuz they're not doing it right?

Mm-hmm.

. Erin Austin: So the first step is to know

Yeah.

What what will this look like if it's completely systemized for me?

Mm-hmm.

, and then slowly work through systemizing it.

You might not ever systemize a hundred percent of your business mm-hmm.

I did 20% of my business.

Things would be 80% better.

right, right.

Now here's a question for you.

I, I'm not sure what your hint will be actually,

can you have too much, too many systems?

Can you overdo it?

Oh, really good question.

I think.

The answer is no.

With a qualification.

I don't think you can have too many systems.

I think you can make them feel too robotic.

And so I think you have to think about when I'm building these systems, how

do I build them so they're like me.

everyone talks about, oh, I don't wanna get a whole lot of

autoresponders or automated emails.

Everybody knows what they are now.

Mm.

You need to write those or you need to create those so that people think it's

a real person writing them, Mm-hmm.

the number of responses we get to automatic emails that we send out.

People thinking it's a specific email just to them.

Mm-hmm.

. And that's what tells me we've got it just right.

there's things in the background that can happen without you, that your clients

don't need to know about, which gives you more spaciousness to give them more

of you to do the things that matter.

But you have to be careful what doesn't come across.

Like they're just a number in the system.

And so we talk about, how are we ticking off?

And it's a Tony Robbins model, his six human needs model, where he talks about,

certainty, variety, love and connection, significance, growth and contribution.

How are we making sure we're Fitting everybody's needs.

We're filling our clients' needs, and if you've got team members or

your team members' needs on every step of the process and every little

box, how are we filling those?

Because I don't think you have too many systems.

I think you can spend too long building them, but I also think

you can make them too robotic.

And so you have to think about how am I filling those psychological

needs for each of my clients with the systems that I'm building?

And

for people who feel like, well, it's gonna take the creativity and the out of it.

Yeah.

what is your advice to them?

? Sarah Greener: My answer is that at the

take no creativity and you're using app.

The part of your brain that is required for your creativity.

So actually right now, your creativity is lower than it needs to be.

Mm-hmm.

that spaciousness to be creative.

I have a past client now who's a website designer and she's one of those, she

wants to be creative and spontaneous and so she pushed back a lot against.

This for a long time.

and if you talk to her today, she'd go, honestly, I've never been more creative

and I've never been more spontaneous.

But she says I have something to be spontaneous away from.

And I had time to be creative because before I was just so busy doing the do

and my brain was so full of every task I needed to do that really the standard

of the creativity that I was doing was actually much lower than it needed to be.

and she's someone who's planning to take the whole of next year off from

her work and her business is just growing and growing and going cause

she's got the right foundations.

Mm-hmm.

, that's fantastic.

Well let's her stay in her zone of genius when she doesn't

have all that other stuff.

Totally.

Because we're not all geniuses at doing accounts and doing admin and stuff.

and like I said, no one, I always feel a bit rude cause I was an

accountant not very few people, unless you're an accountant, got.

of working for someone else.

So you could be an accountant, you got out to do the thing you love, whatever

that piece is that you're really great at.

Mm-hmm.

to serve people with.

So that's the piece that's important.

Agreed.

Well, as I mentioned, this is a very met up podcast.

I'm a female founder and I'm hoping to build a business that

maybe I can sell someday day.

Tell me, are you hoping to sell your business someday?

Yeah, absolutely.

So, I've sold a couple of businesses, some, well, some not so well in the past.

there are certainly some things that you wanna be careful along the way.

I, for a long time, didn't think that this particular business

is one that I could sell.

and now I can actually see, I can really put my.

thoughts, my ip, the way I do things into really good templated, almost products,

I guess, systems that I can sell.

and that's been a real game changer for me in the last two years.

And it's really been about how can I build this so someone else can teach it

and it can still have the same impact.

Because for me, if I'm not giving women back their time and I'm

not increasing their income, that I'm not making the impact.

Cause I think.

ripple effect is really great with women because of how we are

inherently, more generous and we wanna do things for the people that

we love, that nurturing side of us.

So yeah, absolutely.

I'm looking forward to that opportunity.

Not yet.

I think I'd get bored.

reject something else.

I a feeling that you would just have another idea that you would chase so and

that would definitely upset my husband.

Cause he is like in own more businesses.

though, yeah, definitely at some point, the goal would be, by the

time I'm 50, which is nine years away now, that's what I will have done.

I will have exited the.

Excellent, excellent.

So this audience loves a resource to help them on their early to exit journey.

do you have some resources that you'd like to share with the audience?

Yeah, absolutely.

and so if what we've been talking about.

Here today really resonates with you and you would like to get some time back

and you would like to start thinking about building out those systems.

I've got some free resources for you, so over@sarahgreener.com we'll

be in the show notes by the way.

Hourly.

So it'll be easy to find for you.

Yes.

there's a copy of my, free book where I talk about my journey

from working 80 to a hundred hours a week, down to where I am now.

I know I was crazy.

60 felt like part-time for a long time.

so there's a copy of that book there that you can download for free.

you can join the community.

There's a whole lot of training in there where I talk about, how we success map,

how we help our teams use those systems.

And then lastly, if it's a value, we can do a quick 15 minute freedom game

plan where we talk about where you are at and where you wanna be, and what

are the first three steps you need to take to get from where you're at.

to that freedom place that you wanna be.

Wonderful.

That is so generous.

Thank you very much for that.

You did tell us we're you could sarah greener.com.

and, but also where else can people find you on the interwebs?

? Sarah Greener: Yeah.

I'm on Instagram at Sarah greener count.

Sarah Greener coach.

She says slowly Sarah.

and the same on Facebook.

Sarah Greener coach.

and you can also just connect with me by my name Sarah Greener on LinkedIn.

Awesome.

Well thank you.

This has been a delight.

Thank you so much for sharing your time and your wisdom with us.

My absolute pleasure.

I've super enjoyed it and can't wait for you to come visit New

Zealand, the top of the north island.

Next time I know

my, kid wants to come, so I think I'm gonna have

to make a return, so, absolutely.

Thank you, Sarah.