Break the Ceiling

I wanted to give you an update on what's going on with Break the Ceiling. Over the last two years, I've released almost a hundred episodes of Break the Ceiling. I've put out so many episodes that I'm really proud of, and I've talked to a ton of really amazing business owners. Thank you so much for listening and hanging out here with me, geeking out on the backend of running a business.I wanted to let you know that we're going on hiatus, so we won't be releasing any new episodes for a while. I want to take some time to think about how I want the show to evolve, and I'd like to reimagine it a bit. So I'm taking a break from recording and releasing episodes here so that I can take this space.And to be honest, it's been a heck of a year and a half for me and I need a little bit of a break.Stay tuned to this feed and hit subscribe if you're not already a subscriber so you don't miss it when we come back with a new updated and improved show. We have some really exciting things planned, both for the podcast and for the business.In the meantime, there's almost a hundred episodes in the feed so definitely catch up on the ones you've missed. I'd love to connect with you and hear what you'd like to see for the show going forward and I'm looking forward to being back in your podcast feed and your ears soon.Learn more about Susan: Scalespark.co Twitter @theSusanBoles LinkedIn @thesusanboles

Boundaries are all about setting guidelines for how you work.From your very first interaction with a client or a prospect, you're giving them hints about how you work or even explicitly setting expectations for how you'll work together.So if you take four days to respond to their request for information, they might have the impression that you're a little slow. React immediately, and they'll think you're always available.What choices we make about where our boundaries are–or aren't–can have a huge effect on our overall capacity and how much time it takes to actually serve each client.Boundaries can be a really powerful tool when we're talking about streamlining or increasing your operational capacity.Today we're going to dig into them with my guest, Brittany Berger. She's the founder of Work Brighter, which is a digital media company that helps productive unicorns go beyond working smarter to a version of productivity that makes room for “unproductive” things like rest, self-care, and fun.She started Work Brighter after five years running content marketing in really high-stress startups that prioritized hustle, growth, and scaling over self-care and mental health. Now that she's changed her own mindset, she spends her time helping other high achievers find balance for themselves and advocating for mental health awareness.Let's just say her boundary game is strong.Listen to the full episode to hear: How Brittany uses boundaries as guardrails for habits and routines that protect her mental and physical health How adding a little extra friction around things like email and social media can help reinforce your boundaries and keep you from breaking them yourself Why building boundaries to manage your energy rather than pushing through leads to sustainable productivity How Brittany has redefined success in a way that respects her health and wellbeing and not just the bottom line Learn more about Brittany: BrittanyBerger.com Work Brighter @workbrighter on Instagram @thatbberg on Twitter The Slackification of the Family Home–The Atlantic Magazine Learn more about Susan: Scalespark.co Twitter @ScaleSpark LinkedIn @thesusanboles

You are not your business.Your business is something you are creating, which means you have a relationship with it.Like any relationship that we are in, the relationship that we have with our business can be complex and takes understanding, consideration, and work. And as with our personal relationships, the ones that we have with our businesses are shaped by our past experiences, for better or worse.We might have been told that we're supposed to leave our baggage at the door when we come into work–we might even think we succeed–but that's not how humans work. And when we ignore how our pasts affect our present, we set ourselves up to repeat unhealthy relationship patterns everywhere in our lives.In today's episode, we'll talk about how your foundational experiences might show up in your business and create limitations to your growth, especially when it comes to perfectionism and control.Nicole Lewis-Keeber is a business therapist and mindset coach who works with entrepreneurs to create and nurture healthy relationships with their businesses. She's a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with a Masters in Social Work and she writes and speaks about the impact of small-t trauma on businesses. Her biggest, most important work is in combining therapeutic processes with business coaching to help entrepreneurs build emotionally sustainable and financially stable businesses.Listen to the full episode to hear: How your business is not you, but a thing you're in relationship with How control relates to trust and its impacts on your ability to lead and grow How perfectionism is a safety mechanism and tools to help you begin to lower that shield Why when you've tried all the systems and none of them worked, it's probably not the systems Learn more about Nicole: Trauma and Its Impact on Business - Free Course Nicole Lewis-Keeber Coaching Instagram: @nicole.lewiskeeber Facebook: Nicole Lewis-Keeber Coaching Learn more about Susan: Scalespark.co Twitter @ScaleSpark LinkedIn @thesusanboles

When was the last time you crossed off everything on your to-do list? Have you ever? Does even glancing at it make you feel overwhelmed and maybe a little bad about yourself?Hustle culture tells us that working 24/7, 365 will bring us success, that we have to grind it out to gain ground.But not only is that not realistic for real people with families and friends and lives we want to live, it's not even true.There's a ton of research out there that says resting actually increases your productivity, your effectiveness, your problem-solving skills and your creativity.We need rest to do our best work and to be able to bring our best selves to our businesses.But those to-do list items still need to get crossed off. How do you create the space for rest? For your family and friends and for your best work?There's no shortage of “helpful information” out there about personal and business productivity.We all know those blog posts about some millionaire's morning routine or the latest hack or a new software tool that will magically solve all of your problems with getting things done. But those so rarely work for the average person, let alone if you're adding neurodivergence, chronic illness or disability to the mix.So what do you do? How do you tackle the overwhelm and miles-long to-do list?Tanya Dalton says the key is to get crystal clear on your priorities and then use that as a filter for everything else.Tanya is a productivity expert, speaker, and best-selling author of the Joy of Missing Out. She serves as a growth strategist for female leaders and hosts the Intentional Advantage Podcast. Tonya is also the founder and CEO of inkWELL Press Productivity Co., which provides tools that work as a catalyst to help women do less while achieving maximum success.Listen to the full episode to hear: How getting clear on your mission, vision and core values and leading from them creates a priorities filter Five questions to ask yourself when you're prioritizing a task How to create a priority list, or a “to-do list with intention” Why implementing priority systems at home too creates space for rest and empowers everyone in your household Why a perfectly even work-life balance is not only unachievable, but undesirable, and a new way to think about balance Learn more about Tanya: TanyaDalton.com inkWELL Press Productivity Co. the Intentional Advantage Podcast The Joy of Missing Out Book Facebook: @Tanya.i.Dalton Instagram: @Tanya.i.Dalton Learn more about Susan: Scalespark.co Twitter @ScaleSpark LinkedIn @thesusanboles

Maintenance mode as a topic for the podcast actually came out of a personal capacity crisis.Like a lot of people, since March of 2020, I've been without child care. With my son in hybrid school all year long, I gradually started having less and less time to devote to ScaleSpark.I lowered the bar on my expectations for myself and what I could accomplish again and again and again, but there was still stuff that just wasn't getting done.Don't get me wrong, I wasn't sitting around doing nothing. I executed a big business model shift that included piloting my first group program and creating my Not Rocket Finance course.I got a TON done. But it was a lot less than I normally would have.Then at the beginning of 2021, I reached a bit of a crisis point.I couldn't keep trying to shove a full-time business and being a full-time stay-at-home mom/homeschooler into the same hours. Something had to change.I really started to take a look at what I could stop doing, what needed to change, and what systems I needed to build to take my business from one-to-one client services to a scalable business that could operate in maintenance mode.And I've spent the last 16 episodes interviewing founders about maintenance mode and consistency, exploring capacity, business model, and techniques to prepare and execute maintenance mode in your business.So to wrap up the theme, I wanted to take you behind the scenes and talk about what I learned from all my interviews over the last few months and what I experimented with and tried out in my own business.So I brought my executive producer, Sean McMullin, on the show to interview ME about maintenance mode.Listen to the full episode to hear: How shifting from big picture problem solving to treating the process of being consistent as a series of small experiments satisfied the need to break things in the business Why you need to figure out how you're self-sabotaging, then why you're doing it in order to create effective systems and supports that keep you from it Why maintenance mode isn't about finding the perfect system but stacking systems that are good enough Steps to start looking for what you can automate, delegate, or make more efficient in what you do every day Learn more about Sean:Yellow House MediaLearn more about Susan: Scalespark.co Twitter @ScaleSpark LinkedIn @thesusanboles

Sometimes the challenges to consistency come from self-sabotage, things like distraction, boredom, imposter syndrome.But especially for folks who are neurodivergent or dealing with chronic issues or disabilities, consistency comes with additional challenges that require you to figure out how to manage unpredictable energy levels, or how to cope with executive function issues.Most common productivity advice centers on the idea of trying to do more work, to shove more into the day, to force yourself to change your behavior so you can do more.But what if you don't want to do more? What if you just want to make it easier on yourself to do the work you love?Or what if your brain or energy levels just don't work the same way that the productivity bros hawking the advice do? Then a lot of that advice is just downright useless.The real key is figuring out how your brain works and creating an environment that supports you in doing your best work. And that may take some experimentation, but it probably won't happen following someone else's hacks.Marie Poulin, of Notion Mastery, helps ambitious business owners level up their digital systems, workflow, and productivity, so they can spend more time on what matters. She's been an influential voice in the Notion community, has a big following on her Notion Youtube channel, and has created a lot of the Notion resources available today.Marie also recently discovered that she has ADHD, so her brain works a little differently and things like consistency, scripting or executive functioning–like deciding what to prioritize working on–can be extra challenging.Marie and I talk about consistency and how critical it was to her success with Notion and her course and community Notion Mastery. We also talk about how discovering she was neurodivergent explained so much about how her brain worked and has helped her figure out how to set up systems that work the way she does.Listen to the full episode to hear: How Marie uses making public commitments as an external motivator to keep herself consistent Why she learned to build in opportunities for later iteration and improvement to projects so she can be finished enough for now How Marie stumbled into her ADHD diagnosis and how she gave herself permission to accept that her brain works differently Tools for noting when and how you work best so you can minimize resistance in your schedule Learn more about Marie Poulin: Mariepoulin.com Notion Mastery youtube.com/c/mariepoulin How to Run Your Life Inside of Notion Instagram: @mariepoulin Twitter: @mariepoulin Learn more about Susan: Scalespark.co Twitter @ScaleSpark LinkedIn @thesusanboles

It's ok to quit.Consistency can be critical to success, but knowing when to quit is an equally valuable skill.So, how do you know when to quit and when to just push through the hard parts?You've heard me talking to business owners who credit being consistent as the key to their success.But failure is also a part of being an entrepreneur and one we talk about a lot less because it's not as pretty. Most successful business owners have at least a few failures in their rearview mirror.I had 2 businesses that were marketing and branding successes and abject financial failures before I started ScaleSpark.Failing sucks, there's no doubt about that. But those failures are a big part of what motivates me to teach financial skills and why I believe that your numbers tell you a story about what to do next in your business.Deciding to quit something is so hard and emotionally wrenching. I also wish I'd listened to the story my numbers were telling me on both those businesses and quit earlier.But you don't always know if you're failing. Maybe you're just stuck in what Seth Godin calls "The Dip:" that point in every project where you have to figure out if something is genuinely not working or if you have to push through.Today my guest and I are talking about how to know when you should quit.Margo Aaron is the cohost of the YouTube show Hillary and Margo Yell at Websites and the author behind That Seems Important. She's a psychologist turned accidental marketer and she's fantastic at getting to the heart of the entrepreneurial mindset. Her email newsletter consistently gets right to whatever mindset fog I'm in at that point in time and always manages to encourage me to keep going.Margo and I have both quit businesses. And in this interview that we originally recorded in September of 2019, we explore what it meant to quit and how we each realized it was time to let go.Listen to the full episode to hear: The client call that made Margo realize she had a major disconnect between what she was getting paid to do and what she wanted to be doing What questions to ask yourself to assess if you're in “the Dip” or if it's time to let go Why product-founder fit is as important as product-market fit How to build a business that aligns with your values and defines success on your terms Why you need creativity, intuition, and experimentation in your business, not dogmatic models and rules Learn more about Margo Aaron: That Seems Important Hillary and Margo Yell at Websites Learn more about Susan: Scalespark.co Twitter @ScaleSpark LinkedIn @thesusanboles

Consistency is the underlying premise behind maintenance mode, behind working the system, behind the mantra of "don't break it". It's the opposite of shiny object syndrome.When you're consistent with your offers and your messaging, people know who you are, what you stand for, and what you sell.When you're consistent in your operations, your team and your clients know exactly what to do next.When you're consistent, you're efficient and you don't waste time, effort, or money.Consistency means that you don't get exhausted by decision fatigue - because a lot of your daily decisions have already been made and you're just following the process you decided on a while ago.Consistency builds resilience. Even when you're operating at 10%, having built habits and processes means that you can keep the ball rolling.In order to become more consistent in your business, there are two things you have to figure out.First, you have to get your mindset wrapped around being consistent and prioritizing it. That sounds simple, but in my experience, it's just not. It's so easy to self-sabotage by getting distracted or bored or prioritizing other things.Second, once you know that consistency is an important value to you, you have to build habits and design your environment so that being consistent is actually the easiest path for you to take.If consistency is the goal, building habits is how you accomplish it.Meet Sarah. Sarah Von Bargen is a writer, coach, and educator who helps people spend their time, money, and energy on purpose. And she uses habits to make sure they're sticking to that purpose. Habits have been a critical component in her own business success and in the success of her students, too.Listen to the full episode to hear: How the stress of flying by the seat of her pants turned Sarah into a data-driven planner How changing your exterior circumstances–like charging your phone in another room–supports the interior work that builds lasting habits How Sarah uses a “think about it later” list to help keep herself from productive procrastination and shiny object syndrome Why you should test shiny new ideas on social media or your blog to gauge interest before you spend time or money developing them Learn more about Sarah Von Bargen: Yes and Yes Instagram: @yesandyesblog Money & Happy Facebook Group Free Workbook: How To Rescue The Time & Energy To Go After What You Want Learn more about Susan: Scalespark.co Twitter @ScaleSpark LinkedIn @thesusanboles

The point of maintenance mode is to give you time and space to take a REAL break. Not a vacation where you're checking your email or you're stuck on your laptop kind of break. But a real, genuine break.That step back can feel kinda scary. It might feel like you're standing at a precipice, trying to figure out if you'll trip and fall over the edge, or if it's just a tiny step down to a solid surface. That step means that you have to trust that the systems you've built and the team you've trained can handle whatever comes up. That's the goal, to allow you to be able to take a break from your business without breaking your business. And what does that look like in a real business? To go through the process to prepare for maintenance mode, build the systems, and then trust them to work and step away? That's what we're talking about today.Claire Pelletreau is a Facebook and Instagram ad expert and conversion optimization expert. Claire also LOVES talking about money–profit, loss, the whole shebang. She asks her guests how much they charge–and how much they earn–on her show, the Get Paid Podcast.Claire recently took a break from her business while on maternity leave for several months. She knew it was coming, so she prepared, she planned and she got her business ready to operate in maintenance mode. And then she walked away. For months. During a pandemic. Listen to the full episode to hear: How Claire changed her content strategy and schedule for her podcast to cover her maternity leave How she budgeted for her leave and unforeseen expenses in her absence The process of mentally and emotionally checking out from her business and what it was like to come back to work in a vastly different world after summer 2020 Letting go of selling herself as part of the package and giving her team ownership Learn more about Claire Pelletreau: ClairePells.com Instagram: @clairepells Facebook: @absoluteclaire The Get Paid Podcast Learn more about Susan: Scalespark.co Twitter @ScaleSpark LinkedIn @thesusanboles Resources: You Need a Budget Clockwork: Design Your Business to Run Itself, Mike Michalowicz Rachel Rodgers

In order to be completely away from your business for any length of time, you probably need to hire someone. Or maybe a few someones.In the last episode, I talked to Jason Staats about how he uses technology to help him keep his 4 different ongoing projects in maintenance mode, but hiring is also part of his maintenance strategy. He comes up with the ideas, figures out the tools, then hires someone to monitor and maintain. Technology and Team are the two most powerful resources you have when it comes to operating your business in maintenance mode.Technology allows you to make sure your team is doing only the most high-value tasks and having that team in place means that someone is there to monitor the autopilot, make decisions on the fly, and keep the trains rolling. Having a team you can turn to, and someone you can trust to monitor the autopilot can be the last, very critical, piece of maintenance mode. And it's the piece that allows you to truly step away, and know that things are taken care of, even if you aren't there to be the one to take care of them.Meet India Jackson. She's the CEO of Flaunt Your Fire, a brand visibility agency, and co-founder of Pause on the Play, a podcast and community dedicated to visibility and vulnerability for inclusive leaders. India started off her career as a model and bodybuilder and evolved that into an agency where she now leads a team. We talk about her evolution as a leader and how hiring and finding the right fit was critical to the growth of her agency and for her to be able to step back from doing all the things. Listen to the full episode to hear: How India began building a team to fill in gaps in her skill sets, and how her mindset on delegation has changed in her 10+ years in business  Why she hires client support staff for their empathy and not just their resume  How India approaches partnerships and hiring with a values mindset, from full transparency in job listings to explicitly asking about values in interviews Why your brand or company values have to be broken down into actions you take every day, with clarity on what impact you want to have  Learn more about India Jackson: Flaunt Your Fire Pause on the Play Flaunt Your Fire Podcast Pause on the Play Podcast Instagram: @flauntyourfire @pauseontheplay Connect with India on LinkedIn Learn more about Susan: Scalespark.co Twitter @ScaleSpark LinkedIn @thesusanboles Resources: Erica Courdae Break the Ceiling Episode 83: Leveraging People, Processes and Technology with Jason Staats

You can't step away and do something else if everything's going to come to a screeching halt when you do. To be prepared for maintenance mode, you have to figure out how to get the behind-the-scenes systems to operate, consistently, without you.In order to get your business into maintenance mode–and build a stronger business while you're at it–you have to answer the question, "What if I'm not here?"Ideally, the answer is that nothing changes. Invoices still get sent on time, your products and services still get delivered, and the wheels on the bus keep going round and round. That's the goal of maintenance mode, to me. There are some tasks that really don't lend themselves to having a computer do it. But MOST back-end administration of a business can be automated. And for me, automating that back-end tasks means my business won't break if I'm not here for a bit.The other payoff is that even if I AM working in my business, I have time to do other, more interesting things. I could even start another project like my friend Jason did.Jason Staats is a CPA in Salem Oregon. He's principal at Brenner LLP by day, and an accounting tech enthusiast by night. In addition to his CPA firm, he has also started Launch for Accountants, which is a newsletter and website with all the latest software launches. He's built Realize, a community for accountants and he is launching a software product. All those projects he's started and continues to run? He used technology to make that work and keep them all running, even if he's not IN that business all the time. Listen to the full episode to hear: Why creating a single space to gather opportunities and priorities across projects fights overwhelm How knowing what his “anti-goals” help Jason choose which projects to pursue How considering new projects in terms of skills development keeps distraction and shiny object syndrome in check How getting to maintenance mode lets you choose to pursue side projects and shiny objects  Learn more about Jason Staats: Launch for Accountants Realize Follow Jason on Twitter Learn more about Susan: Scalespark Dollars + Decisions Roundtable Twitter @ScaleSpark LinkedIn @thesusanboles

Sales are the lifeblood of any business.So when you're thinking about maintenance mode in your business, you need to think about how to make sure sales still come in, even if you're not around.Last week we talked about the first step in preparing for maintenance mode by being consistent with your messaging and your offers. If you haven't listened to Episode 81 with Michelle Mazur, go check that one out.This week, I want to talk about step two in preparing for maintenance mode and that's your sales process.In order to put your business into maintenance mode, you have to understand how sales come in, how you make sales, and how you're going to continue to make sales, even if you aren't actively working in your business for the momentWhile sales are one of the first things business owners seem to want to outsource, sales are probably one of the very last pieces of your business operations that you should be handing off to people.And that means that figuring out how to put sales on maintenance can be a challenge.And my friend, Allison Davis, is my go-to when it comes to sales and creating sustainable sales processes.Allison is a sales trainer and coach who ignites growth in small business owners and mission-driven organizations. I've done a TON of sales training–it's one of my weaknesses so it's something I've tried hard to develop.Allison was the person who finally made it "click" for me that I don't have to do ALL the things when it comes to sales, I just have to build a sustainable system and stick with it.Listen to the full episode to hear: How to pull yourself out of overwhelm by actively choosing what you can do consistently Why using buyer types to modify your sales approach doesn’t have to be inauthentic Why Allison started the Sales Roundtable and why it’s an effective and efficient way to connect with potential clients Learn more about Allison Davis: Allison-Davis.com Sales Roundtable Learn more about Susan: Scalespark Dollars + Decisions Roundtable Twitter @ScaleSpark LinkedIn @thesusanboles Resources: Break the Ceiling Episode 81: Work on a Consistent Message and Marketing System to Prepare For Maintenance Mode with Michelle Mazur Dani Johnson’s GEMS® Mastery

No one is bored with your business but you.The last month or two, we've been talking about maintenance mode–the idea that you can create a business that can kind of run itself. There are systems and processes set up, so everyone knows exactly what they need to do.The same kinds of systems and tools that you would use to prepare your business for maintenance are the SAME ones that you would use to free up capacity and prepare your business to scale.And that means that spending time setting up repeatable processes and checklists and automation has a HUGE return on your investment of time and effort.But, what, PRECISELY, do you need to DO to get your business prepared for maintenance mode?The first step is to zoom out and look at the end goal–what your business will look like, feel like and run like IN maintenance mode.The second step of preparing for maintenance mode requires you to think about your business as an ecosystem. In order for you to step away, every part has to operate smoothly.SO how do you prep each PART of your business for maintenance? What do you need to consider and what are some tactics that you could use to help you get there?Michelle Mazur is the founder of Communication Rebel, a Messaging Coach and Author and she's the voice in my head when it comes to my own marketing and messaging, telling me that consistency is the key to success.Consistency in your messaging means that you don't have to reinvent the wheel every quarter. It means you know what you need to say and you know to whom and how you need to say it. And it’s the first part of being able to prepare your business for maintenance mode.Listen to the full episode to hear: How to build your company’s communication bible: the Brand Message Guide Why consistency and repetition aren’t boring to your audience How to experiment in order to optimize and minimize, so you’re marketing where it counts What to do when you hit a dip in sales or engagement Learn more about Michelle Mazur: Communication Rebel Instagram: @drmichellemazur Three Word Rebellion Three Word Rebellion (book) Learn more about Susan: Scalespark Dollars + Decisions Roundtable Twitter @ScaleSpark LinkedIn @thesusanboles

Sometimes we end up building a business that just doesn't fit our lives. Not intentionally. Sometimes it just happens that way.Maybe you don’t have the freedom you thought you’d have. Maybe you’re doing group courses but you really want to be 1 on 1 with clients, or vice versa. Sometimes when you step back and examine what it'll take to get to maintenance mode or what it will take to scale or grow, you realize that you don't actually have the capacity to grow this thing you built. The business you built isn't designed for that.In order to get to maintenance mode, you need to shift. Ryan Lazanis and I talked about this in Episode 75 - we'd each built businesses that didn't fit how we wanted to live our lives and so we ended up starting new businesses and specifically building them for maintenance mode.But you don't have to burn the whole thing down. Meet Mark Butler. He's the founder of the accounting startup Let’s Do the Books, as well as a freelance CFO for life coaches. And instead of shutting his business down and starting over when he realized that something needed to change for him, he created a complementary business with a different business model–one that was designed for maintenance. Listen to the full episode to hear: How Mark makes two very different business models work under one roof Why his team is always empowered to tell him no How side projects sustain his creativity and generate new opportunities for the business Why every entrepreneur needs to ask themselves what they really want to be when they grow up Learn more about Mark Butler: Let’s Do the Books Money School Learn more about Susan: Scalespark Dollars + Decisions Roundtable Twitter @ScaleSpark LinkedIn @thesusanboles Resources: Break the Ceiling Episode 75: Starting with the End in Mind: Reverse-Engineering the Plan with Ryan Lazanis Break the Ceiling Episode 79: The Maintenance Mode Mindset: Stop Breaking Your Business with Racheal Cook

Don't break it, stay the course, work the system. Don't break it, stay the course, work the system. That's the refrain that's in the back of my head all the time now. One of the biggest challenges of getting your business into maintenance mode is your mindset. It's not that it's so difficult to build systems or design your business model to be sustainable and resilient. It's that we, as entrepreneurs like breaking stuff and we LIKE shiny new things–shiny things are FUN! Breaking your business over and over with new offers, new messaging, new technology tools, new business models is not the path to creating a lasting, sustainable business. In fact, it’s how too many business owners burn out. The real answer might seem boring, but it's actually kind of freeing.It’s consistency, working the system, staying the course. Once you figure out what works for your business, the key is not to break it and not to get in your own wayBut... HOW? HOW do I get out of my own way? HOW do I stop getting distracted by every new idea that pops into my head? How do I keep myself from breaking it? What am I supposed to DO all day if my business doesn’t need me to shop up and deliver?That's exactly what I'm talking about today with Rachael Cook. She's a business strategist, author, and the host of the Promote Yourself to CEO podcast. And she helps business owners figure out how NOT to break their businesses.Listen to the full episode to hear: Why redefining your role and asking yourself what are the jobs only YOU can do is an essential mindset shift How treating your systems and your team as assets and not just your content can prevent launch burnout Leaving hustle culture behind so you can enjoy the fruits of your labor How getting to maintenance mode before a crisis or major life event hits safeguards your business against the unpredictable Learn more about Racheal Cook: RachealCook.com Promote Yourself to CEO Podcast Instagram: @racheal.cook Learn more about Susan: Scalespark Dollars + Decisions Roundtable Twitter @ScaleSpark LinkedIn @thesusanboles Resources: Break the Ceiling Episode 07: Why Streamlining Your Effort Pays Off with Business Strategist Michelle Warner  Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don't by Jim Collins

As I have been talking with business owners about maintenance mode, they have consistently brought up burnout. That moment when they realized that they couldn't keep working the way they were working.Caring for a family member or realizing they were burnt out or trying to handle a load of virtual school with no child care for a year – they all encountered a recognition that their own personal capacity had been reduced. For me, that moment of recognition forced me to realize that my realistic maximum capacity was WAY lower than I thought it was. We all have a maximum capacity - a ceiling of how much work we want to do or how much our business can handle. But also true for us as individuals. And so when you're preparing your business for maintenance mode, you need to examine your own capacity as a founder. You need to think about your own energy, priorities, and boundaries. And that's virtually impossible if you're stressed and exhausted. Re-examination forced by burnout and exhaustion is exactly what happened to today’s guest, Finka Jerkovic. Managing her own energy as a business owner has been crucial in making sure that she is building a business that is supporting her, building a business based on work that she truly LOVES to do.Finka is a coach, speaker, and author of the book Sell From Love.She brings over two decades of experience in corporate Canada in the financial services industry, with expertise in sales, leadership, communication, and coaching.Finka helps her clients discover their “Brilliant Difference” so that they get 100% clear on their unique talents, skills, and expertise so that they can use their personal strengths to grow their business.Listen to the full episode to hear: What led to Finka recognizing that she had hit burnout and how she approached the need for immediate change  How she approached her capacity, energetically and operationally, differently when she came back from burnout  How what Finka calls “environmental wrenches” are actually just systems  How the same systems that help prepare our business for maintenance mode are the SAME systems that can help increase our capacity  That you can say yes to as much as you want, but your systems of support need to be built in order for you to be able to say yes.  Learn more about Finka Jerkovic: Sell From Love Instagram @finka_jerkovic LinkedIn @finka-jerkovic Learn more about Susan: Scalespark Dollars + Decisions Roundtable Twitter @ScaleSpark LinkedIn @thesusanboles

How's your capacity feeling these days? Getting a lot done? Or, like me, have you been hitting that pandemic wall hard? Over the last few weeks, I've been exploring the idea of maintenance mode in business, and today I want to shift from exploring the IDEA of maintenance mode into more tactical applications. If YOU wanted to move your business into maintenance mode, or you wanted to focus on scaling, how would you DO that? How would you prepare for maintenance mode? In all of my conversations with other business owners who have made this shift, there has consistently been a first step that they had to address.Capacity.Either the business's capacity or their own capacity as the owner. Each business owner ran up against a wall (sometimes repeatedly) and came to the realization that the way they HAD been working wasn't the way they wanted to CONTINUE working.They had to make changes to increase their capacity. Sometimes, that meant changing a business model to a more sustainable one. Sometimes it meant creating a capacity limit to protect their energy or just stepping back from the work for months at a time. Sometimes it just meant examining the work they did and figuring out how to make it more efficient. That's the path that today’s guest, Anna Wolf, took. Anna is the CEO and owner of SuperScript Marketing, a content marketing agency for financial brands. She runs a team of marketers, scattered throughout the world, who create content for financial companies and who provide customized services for each client.When Anna ran up against her capacity ceiling, she decided that she loved the work she was doing and didn't really want to change the way that she was working. But that something still had to change.So Anna turned to systems. Listen to the full episode to hear: How Anna thinks about capacity and figuring out what the real capacity is in her businesses About some of the projects that Anna built to expand her business’s capacity without fundamentally changing what she was already doing to deliver quality services What impact these systems and processes have had on her business or on her own capacity as the owner And how Anna has learned that there needs to be a balance between seeking answers externally and follow your gut, even if that means risking making mistakes Learn more about Anna Wolf: SuperScript Financial Marketing Agency  LinkedIn @annawolf Learn more about Susan: Scalespark Dollars + Decisions Roundtable Twitter @ScaleSpark LinkedIn @thesusanboles

Visionary or Integrator? Startup or Maintenance CEO?In the world of business, there is no shortage of ways to categorize your leadership style and the way you operate. But maybe in the real world, it's not quite so distinct.I LOVE quizzes and personality tests and different ways of categorizing my personality, my skills, and how I think about things.Sometimes these assessments are genuinely useful and can help us understand how and why we do the things we do and think the way we think - which can help us improve our weaknesses and lean into our strengths.But, they can also sometimes create artificial boxes around us and create limitations that can keep us from growing as leaders and as individuals.One of these dichotomies that I've repeatedly gotten stuck on, personally, is the idea that you are either a startup or a maintenance CEO.You're either the energetic kid here to whip everyone into a frenzy of work, who changes things at the drop of a hat. Or you're the "adult" they bring in once things are rolling, so you can bring order to the chaos.As we've been talking about maintenance mode, it seemed like a logical choice to examine whether or not all business owners can even BE in maintenance mode. What if you ARE either a startup CEO or a maintenance one? Does that mean that your business will never be able to operate like clockwork?My guest today is Sarah Avenir, author and the CEO of &yet, a marketing and messaging agency. And she's been on both sides of this debate.She's BEEN a startup CEO, a freelancer, an employee, and then she got tapped to become the CEO of &yet and she had to figure out how to make a team of designers, developers, and strategists come together under what she calls systems of practice.Listen to the full episode to hear: What Sarah thinks of the dichotomy of Start-Up CEO vs Maintenance CEO and what the term Maintenance Mode means to her What the journey from being a startup CEO to a maintenance style CEO has been like for somebody who thinks in systems and who is comfortable with consistency. How Sarah has found freedom through the structure and routine of systems And how systems in practice incorporates being a human being and what we need to stay healthy Learn more about Sarah Avenir: Twitter @sarahavenir Roam Research People-First Growth Find Your Weirdos Meet Our Weirdos Learn more about Susan: Scalespark Dollars + Decisions Roundtable Twitter @ScaleSpark LinkedIn @thesusanboles

Most of us are creating businesses that tie us to a physical place and set hours. But oftentimes, the life we want to live doesn’t always align with the businesses we create. When I started ScaleSpark, I designed it from the ground up to be the kind of business that would give me the freedom and flexibility I wanted. I knew what my end game was so I built a business that reflected that. Today my guest, Ryan Lazanis, talk about how he did the same thing. Key Takeaways: - What Ryan learned from his first company about creating a scalable company that can operate on maintenance mode - The lessons he took with him from that first company and how it influenced how he built the second one - How Ryan reverse-engineered his business to revolve around his ideal life

For this episode, I wanted to figure out what maintenance mode means to different people and what it looks like in different kinds of businesses. I started asking podcast guests and people around me what maintenance mode meant to them and I never got the same answer twice.

For the past couple of weeks, I've been re-releasing episodes that are the best cuts from three of my very favorite Break The Ceiling Episodes. This week—and our last Best of Break The Ceiling—I'm revisiting my interview with Michelle Warner.

For the next three weeks, I'm going to re-release episodes that are the best cuts from three of my very favorite Break The Ceiling Episodes. This week, I'm revisiting my interview with Charlie Gilkey where we talked about how to get out of your own way and how to avoid roadblocks that you inevitably run up against.

For the next three weeks, I'm going to re-release episodes that are the best cuts from three of my very favorite Break The Ceiling Episodes. This week, I'm revisiting my interview with Justin Jackson, co-founder of transistor.fm, the company that hosts this podcast.

Social media is a major marketing channel for LOTS of small businesses, and it's an important part of the decision-making process if you're thinking about your own marketing from a perspective of privacy, so I wanted to bring on someone who did go through this evaluation process and implemented their OWN experiment. Key Takeaways: - How Nathalie made the decision to drop the pixel and leave Instagram - What she does instead now and we talk about how to get real, actionable data while still respecting people's privacy AND holding true to her own desire not to support Facebook as a company. - The projects and ideas that I'm still working on implementing for ScaleSpark when it comes to digital privacy

Kim has been instrumental in helping me execute my privacy-focused marketing strategy and keeps me up to date on changes in the marketing and digital privacy world. Key Takeaways: - What Kim’s done for me behind-the-scenes at ScaleSpark - Behind the scenes of ScaleSpark's privacy-focused marketing experiment - Why SEO is the perfect strategy if you're concerned with data privacy in your own marketing - The big changes coming with Facebook and Instagram and data tracking that we should all know about

Jessica Robinson is an outsourced Chief Information Security Officer, founder, and CEO of PurePoint International and an expert in data security, cyber risk, and privacy. PurePoint International provides cybersecurity consulting and training for financial services, insurance, and other middle-market global companies with $100M-$500M in revenue. Key Takeaways: - Where cybersecurity risks might live in your business - How to assess the risk of a data breach in your own business - What steps to take to shore up the security of your business and keep both your AND your clients' information safe - The biggest concerns around digital privacy and online security for small business owners

Paul and his cofounder, Jack Ellis, are two of my go-to experts on both digital privacy AND on the logistics of how to build that ethos into the DNA of your company. It's a core value for them as well, so they have to navigate the balance of promoting, marketing, and growing a company while still staying true to keeping data secure and while being respectful of individual's data AND transparent about what they're doing. Key Takeaways: - Why we should care about data privacy—even when we have nothing to hide - Balancing privacy with marketing and promoting needs of a growing company while still keeping everyone’s data private - Why I decided to swap Google Analytics for Fathom - My background in Security Forces for the Air Force and how that informs my approach to safety and security in my business

Brian helps clients figure out what to do with their finances and helps them figure out a plan to meet their financial goals. A lot of that work means really examining what success means, what enough means, and recognizing that, even with a good financial plan, as soon as you walk out the door with your plan, it'll change. But that doesn't mean you failed. Key Takeaways: - How to examine your financial values and create your OWN definition of success and failure when it comes to your financial decisions - What does "success" look like when it comes to managing your money? - How to incorporate what we really care about into our financial choices

Rita Barry is a certified measurement marketer. She founded her company, a boutique digital marketing optimization consultancy based in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, in 2009. Rita deals with numbers and measuring success all day long and the journey to and through enough has been one she's spent a LOT of time thinking about. Key takeaways: - Step-by-step through the journey to (and past) enough - What enough means to Rita - What it looked like pre-enough and what she did to break through and past enough - How her goals and what she was concerned about changed throughout her journey - What she does, now that revenue benchmarks don't mean quite as much.

Once we understand how the system we live in impacts our relationship with money, we can start thinking about it in a much broader view -- and we can start considering using our businesses as a means to start evening out some of that inequality. Key takeaways: - The value of doing money mindset work - How your relationship to money affects just about every area of your business, including a deep dive on pricing - How Bear approaches making their services more accessible - And what accessible actually MEANS in the first place...

WHY do we buy what we buy? That's what I want to know. And, as it happens, I know someone who LOVES geeking out on buying and marketing psychology. When I want to nerd out on the psychology behind marketing, Margo Aaron is my go-to. Key take-aways: - How shopping was INVENTED (yes, I said invented!) - Why we buy things we WANT instead of only things we need - How to ethically use the power of psychology for good in your marketing

You want to feel like you’re on top of your money stuff but it’s tough to climb over all the questions and reports and bank accounts and spreadsheets. That’s where I come in. I help you Think Like a CFO. And in this Bonus episode I talk about: - Everything you’ll learn during Think Like A CFO - How we’ll examine your relationship to (and mindset of!) money - The kind of support you can expect from me when you sign up for Think Like A CFO - Your bonus if you sign up by December 31, 2020!

We've been talking this month about creative strategies around pricing or packaging your services. And as part of that exploration, I wanted to re-air an interview that I did with Lacey Sites from a Lit Up Life in 2019. Lacey is a business mentor and success coach for high-performing women entrepreneurs and she created a unique revenue sharing pricing structure that allowed her to scale her one-on-one coaching business and dramatically grow her profits without bringing on a single new client. Key takeaways

Today, I'm talking to Hunter Niland Welling – marketing consultant and coach for women growing high-end service-based businesses. I wanted to bring Hunter on the podcast because she has a way of working with her clients that, when I experienced it as a client, was so effective that I actually shifted my OWN work with my 1:1 clients to the same model. Key takeaways: - How to combine intensive-style offerings with recurring revenue - How Hunter developed intensives as the right model for her and her clients - The kind of impact she's seen on both her business AND her clients as a result of implementing recurring intensives

Meet Rob Howard, the founder and CEO of Howard Development & Consulting, the web development firm that creative agencies trust when every pixel matters. One of Rob’s core values is building relationships—and not just ANY relationships. To him, long term relationships with both his clients and with his team are essential to business. He treats clients as friends—folks he’s going to be working with for 5 or 10 years, at least. Key takeaways: - Why Rob has something that he calls an Assurance Plan which is a hybrid retainer that allows him to continue to work with his web design clients long term - Why Rob offers a 30-day satisfaction guarantee on his work - The logistics behind Rob’s offerings and how these are just a few of the ways that he infuses relationship-building into every aspect of his agency - How to create offerings that embody your company values - Details on crafting ALL your services around a long-term recurring relationship model

You can use your pricing to create exclusivity—BUT, you can also use your pricing to create access and to start moving towards using your business to create more social and economic justice. Kate Strathmann spends a lot of time exploring new techniques and strategies to create more equitable businesses and works with business owners to start thinking about how to implement them in their own business. Key takeaways: - The different pricing strategies you might consider using, like sliding scale or pay what you wish pricing models - When these strategies make sense, and when a different strategy might be a better option - Some of the pitfalls that Kate's seen come up as folks start to implement some of these strategies (and how to avoid them)

Alethea Cheng Fitzpatrick and I talk about what happens when things go BOOM and you have to figure out how to manage that boom in your business at a time when your personal situation might actually mean that you have less time than ever to spend in or on your business? Key takeaways: - What 2020 has looked like for Alethea and how she’s figuring out how to balance business and homeschooling her kids—and how she’s being conscious about taking care of her own needs, too - What techniques and systems she’s put into place to try and cope with all the changes that this year has brought - How Alethea’s day-to-day looks as she manages having the capacity to work less but having MORE business than ever - How to balance business and life when they're both changing

Lauren's been through a MASSIVE change this year, so I wanted to bring her back on the show to talk about how she's been managing the impact on her business. Lauren used to run an event planning business for tech, and after her best year ever in 2019, was ready to give 2020 a run for its money. Sadly, the opposite happened, but out of breakdowns come breakthroughs. Key Takeaways: - How Lauren’s cash flow management skills gave her the time she needed to make strategic decisions instead of reacting out of panic - Making a HUGE pivot in your business and how to stay resilient - Processing grief as a business skill - An update on what Lauren decided to do about her business this year

YOU built your business and most likely, it depends on you in some form or fashion to keep going. Even if you have a staff or other people that do a lot of the day-to-day work, they still look to you for direction. If you suddenly aren't there anymore, what happens? That's what contingency planning is all about: making a plan for what happens to your business (and your personal business) if you need to step away for a while or you just flat out can’t run the business. And my guest on this episode, Mary Beth Simon, is an expert in planning for contingencies. - Who should be creating contingency plans and what it looks like in the real world when you have to execute your plan - How important your preparation is when it comes to ensuring your business can survive a big change - Tips for planning for a worst-case scenario - How being prepared for crisis helps you be resilient in your business and personal life

You know that the ability to be resilient and flexible in the face of change IS a skill and a mindset that you can work on. You can't control the change (because change is inevitable!)—but you can control how you react to it. Today, Melody and I talk about why investing in developing skills to strengthen how we personally deal with change creates a huge impact on how we approach leading our businesses through change. Key Takeaways: - How Melody uses systems and structures to help minimize stress, build resilience and manage change in her life and business - Why being kind to yourself and empathetic to your team is a HUGE part of effectively managing a rapidly changing environment - How to accept that during intense change, your bandwidth is a LOT smaller than it was - Techniques and systems to building personal and business resilience in your own life - How to find the right structures that minimize your mental load so you can take care of you and your team

How DO we go about building up those change management muscles? How do we make ourselves and our business stronger and better able to weather this ever-changing environment? Meet Elatia Abate. She is an entrepreneur, educator, and future-forward strategist. She partners with organizations that range in size from Fortune 500 to early-stage start-ups to help leaders make sense of the ever-growing disruption in our world and channel that disruption into tangible results. Key Takeaways: - How resilience and change management are intertwined - What does the future of work/future of business look like NOW? - Strategies to exist and thrive in a constantly changing environment - What Elatia learned from her personal experiment in resiliency

You can use no-code tools like ClickUp to streamline and automate your internal processes and enhance your communication with clients. You can also build digital products, help your students learn more effectively, and add to diversity your revenue streams. Layla is ALL IN with ClickUp. Key Takeaways: - How Layla’s using ClickUp EVERYWHERE in her business - The impact she's seen by systemizing everything using ClickUp - How to use no-code templates and tools as an opt-in and marketing tool - How to get the most out of the no-code tools you're using in your business

This week, we're talking about using no-code tools to actually build your own custom software products. My guest today is the queen of this. Brittany Berger is the founder of Work Brighter, a digital media company that helps productive unicorns go beyond working smarter to a version of productivity that makes room for “unproductive” things like rest, self-care, and fun. - How Brittany’s business is structured around no-code tools - How she comes up with ideas for new no-code products - What her development process looks like to build and refine these products - How to use no-code to build products and additional revenue streams - How to use no-code tools and resources to add value to a community or course

No-code or low-code tools–Jason and I are talking about the tools that have been built specifically to enable YOU, someone with no background or experience in building software, to build your own custom tools. Jason is especially interested in the intersection of the accounting industry and emergent technology—and, specifically, how we can turn the automation doom and gloom narrative on its head and show accountants how to proactively leverage new technology. Key takeaways: - How to use no-code tools to scale operations (because the more efficient the workflow, the more clients you can serve with the same staff, and the more profitable you can be) - Using no-code tools to automate workflow—both internal AND with clients - How to leverage automated technology so client communication feels really personal

I thought it’d be fun to take you behind the scenes and talk through how and why I decided to invest in starting this podcast, how it all works behind the scenes, and a look back a year into podcasting. To help me answer the question of if it's been worth it, I’m delighted to bring my friend Tara McMullin to discuss just that. Key Take-aways: - How do you evaluate the ROI of a podcast? - My decision-making process and how long I was willing to give it - The strategy behind my podcast and what business goals I was trying to achieve - How much time goes into producing a single podcast episode

Social media is one of those investments you can choose to make in your business where the ROI isn’t always super clear. That’s why I invited Andréa Jones—host of the Savvy Social podcast, creator of the Savvy Social School, and an expert at social media—to talk all about measuring the ROI on your investments even if there isn’t a straight line from investment to payoff. Key Takeaways: - How to measure and evaluate whether or not your social media strategy is "working" - How coaches, consultants, and service-based business owners can use social media as a tool for business connection - Why Andréa prefers tracking profile visits and link clicks over followers and engagement - How to evaluate your social media data—and why any strategy needs at least 3 months to see what works and what doesn’t

I want to talk about when an investment seems like a pretty straightforward payoff—but taking advantage of that opportunity might conflict with your values. How do you balance the financial health of your business against your values? Today, I’m talking with two guests, Nancy Jane Smith and Bonnie Gillespie, about their thought processes behind making some big business decisions. - What if the ROI could be great, but it conflicts with your values? - Why Nancy decided to fully pull her business activities out of Facebook and Instagram—and why they were at odds with her personal values - What Nancy’s noticed in her business since leaving social media and how she’s grown her email list without the help of Instagram - How Bonnie uses her Facebook account strictly for business (and how she’s set it up that way) - The strategy behind Bonnie’s Facebook ads and why she prefers Instagram and Facebook to other social media or professional platforms

We all have a process we go through when we're thinking through new investments in our business. Whether you're conscious of your process or not... it's there. Today we are talking with Beryl Young about how she goes about investing and how she arrived at her process. - How Beryl decides what to invest in—or not—for her business - The opportunity cost of the investments Beryl’s made over the years - The 3 main buckets where Beryl invested her resources and the outcome of each

Michelle Mazur helps business owners shake things up (but having trouble talking about it) through their messaging. In this episode, Michelle shares some of the significant investments she's made in her business that had a long payoff, her approach for evaluating investments in her business, and her view on the intangible, long-term benefits of those investments. - The framework for making investment decisions - What categories of things to consider and evaluate against - How to consider the intangible benefits that are often hard to measure - When big investments don't always pay off

No stranger to making hard decisions and priming herself for growth, Emily Thompson talks about how hiring the right people for the right positions with the right mix of skills has made her business more efficient, more effective, and more profitable. - How Emily uses key members of her team to run both Being Boss and Almanac Supply Co. - What her hiring (and firing) process looks like—and how she preps herself for those hard conversations - How she hired the right person in the perfect role for their skillset and it resulted in tripling their revenue

Today, Mel Richards shares with us how her choice of software has helped her scale her company, increase profits, and deliver better results for her clients. Key takeaways: - How the right choice of software has helped Mel scale her company, increase profits, and deliver better results for her clients - How the right software tools make your team more effective and how ClickUp helps Mel’s team know what to do next - All the tools that have been essential for Mel’s business - Lower costs, less complication, more opportunities for automation