Working with clients one on one can be tough.
Does this situation sound familiar to you?
You’re maxed out. You’re not making the money you thought you would and you’re not necessarily getting the freedom you pictured when you started your business either.
Is there any hope for that to be better?
One of the best things you can do for yourself and your business’s growth is to do something I honestly struggle with all of the time.
Find some help.
What does that look like?
Working with clients one on one can be tough.
Does this situation sound familiar to you?
You’re maxed out. You’re not making the money you thought you would and you’re not necessarily getting the freedom you pictured when you started your business either.
Is there any hope for that to be better?
One of the best things you can do for yourself and your business’s growth is to do something I honestly struggle with all of the time.
Find some help.
What does that look like?
Working with clients. One on one can be a tough way to grow a business. I mean, does this situation even sound remotely familiar to you? You're maxed out. You're not making the money you thought you would, and you're not necessarily getting the freedom you pictured when you started your business either. Now, is there any hope for that to be better than what it is for you right now? One of the best things you can do for yourself and for your business's growth is to do something. I honestly struggle with all of the time, find some help. Now, last week I went to my first intensive conference and I wanna tell you exactly why this was the best thing I have potentially ever done. You're listening to the captain coder podcast each week. I take you through actionable strategies that can help you grow your online business. I'm your host, Marisa VanSkiver, AKA captain coder. Okay. Let's just get one thing out of the way before we dive in today's episode. When I say the word coaching, how does that make you feel? Honestly, for me, the word itself kind of makes me cringe just a little bit. Unfortunately, the coaching community has its bad apples, um, that have certainly given it a bad name. There are people out there who are coaching, who have never done what they're teaching other people, how to do, which is just wild to me. But when you find the right coach who has a helpful community attached to their program, you can literally shortcut some major pitfalls. Now in my own business, I'm often finding myself, wanting to make a change, change, how I run my business, change, how I operate personally. I always think I am far more organized than I actually am for instance, but, uh, I let clients get in the way of that all day long, I will 100% prioritize client work over my business. And I would like to say it's because, you know, emergencies happen or big projects come in. And then I get sucked into what my clients need, not what my business does, but you wanna know the real reason. And probably the reason as you're listening to this oh, damnit, she's gonna say it. I don't wanna do this stuff in my business because I don't understand it as well is I understand the work I'm doing for clients. And it's not even that I'm doing different things for clients. This is what's wild for clients than I am <laugh> for my own business. My own website has been paused for like two months. I know how to build websites. I know what I'm doing there. It's not that I don't know how to do the work. I don't know how to treat myself as a client and look at it from that 30,000 foot view and get the bigger picture. But when you have a guide, when you have a coach, a community of people who have been there before, you can actually step ahead of those places where you have struggled and literally get ahead of the game. You can stop making the same mistakes you have been making. And if nobody but me ever listens back to this episode, to remind myself in a three or four months when I'm in a, not the fired up vibe by men, <laugh> this is, this is Marisa. This is for you. You might say I can't scale a service based business. I don't want a large team. And I love what I do. This is literally a sentence that I said to people last week, I went to a conference last week. I literally said, I don't want a large team. I love working on client work. Now, granted, I know you can scale a service based business, but I wasn't sure <laugh>. I wasn't sure I could scale it the way that I like running my business and really you can't, but that can PO, and that can pose some challenges. But guess what? You're not the only one who's tried to do this all before at all. Just long pause. There you are not the only one who has tried to do this before. When you find a community in your industry, this is really important. A community within your own industry of other business owners and entrepreneurs, your business life can change dramatically. So I mentioned, I went to a conference last week. This was my first in person conference I've ever been to because frankly never, already ever sends things to send developers to anything in person over the years, they always send the marketing people. They never send to developers. They don't think we talk to human beings very well. I'm not saying it's not true. Okay? I'm not. I'm just saying this was my first ever professional conference. And it was a small conference. It was my coach's conference, specifically for his clients. We had it in San Diego place in California that I've never been before. And I was able to meet people in person that I'd only ever talk to online. Not only that, it helped me to build deeper relationships with a bunch of people and spend four days comparing notes and talking shop, which side note? Um, literally Monday was the first day my boyfriend texts me and he goes, this is your dream vacation. Isn't it. You're in a nice place. You're eating good food. And you're spending all day talking about business. I'm not saying he's wrong. My coach just said, apparently it wasn't supposed to be a vacation, but it kind of was for me <laugh> you know what? It was amazing. And it was, it was tiring because I was literally surrounded by people from 8:00 AM
to after 10:00 PM. And that is a lot for this introvert, but it was incredibly amazing. I wanna break down why, why this community has been so instrumental in my months that I've been part of it, but why? Especially last week, it was just eye opening to me when I decided to fully dive in and give to being a part of a community, which I know is crazy. But bear with me here. Now over the course of four days, four days, three of them really in the room, I got the most clarity and inspiration from others around me not to knock the people that we had on stage, but it was the people around me coming from all different areas of the world at different stages in our businesses. But we're all facing similar challenges. Now, some people in that room just have the same challenges on a different scale to me. And that's totally understandable, but listening to just how someone else like me operates their business, mind boggling, drawing inspiration from them, because why didn't I think of that? That was most of my week. I cannot believe I didn't think of those things before, right? Because we can't get out of our own heads. You need someone to help you look at your business differently and a community of people that are very similar to you. I mean, that's just the best way to do that. I can tell you right now, this is going to be life changing for me and my business. Having, having a community it already has been, but having diving deeper into that community and really giving my business over to that, which sounds really woo, woo, which is one of my coaches' favorite phrases. But anyway, now something else that you need to keep in mind, if you're gonna dive into a community of other industry professionals and it's something I struggle with a lot, don't be afraid to ask for help. Now, I want you to think about this other people. When you find a community in your industry, other people have been through it before. They might be several steps ahead of you or in even in a similar situation, but you can easily compare notes. I, I was able to show off a couple times last week, I was not just the person who had no clue what was going on. And my favorite part was being able to brag on Erin, my OBM and talk about the systems and the things that she's setting in place. For me. At one point, I had a circle of web designers and developers and agency owners wanting to know what an online business manager was and how I found this magical unicorn <laugh> for my business, because that's literally what they all thought she was they're right. Just FYI. Now I was also able to listen and ask for help on how others find new team members, how they're managing their team, or even how they're crafting and selling offers, being okay with asking for that help. Even though it's not, it's not in my nature to do that, but I'm, I am trying, I have been trying for months to get better about this, but being a part of community though, they can actually give me help. You don't have to do exactly what people are telling you to do because your business is different and is unique, but you do have to be okay with listening and thinking about, okay know, how can I apply that to my business and my unique situation. Now, the other part of all of this, having a community that you can turn to can be a huge benefit to avoiding some of those really common mistakes. Now, as service providers, we're all facing some pretty similar challenges. Clients demand a lot of our time. We don't prioritize our own business. I'm surely am not the only one. And I bet you struggled just a bit with keeping some of those boundaries in place. Now, as digital agencies, we have a unique set of challenges with technological problems, client communication, and more so being able to be in a room with 50 other agency owners or slack channel and talk through those same issues. I can avoid some of those mistakes. Now, if you stay active in the community, if that you join, when you find this community, if you stay active, you're gonna start paying attention to those things. Your other community members are struggling with and ahead of those problems in your own business. And believe me, they're going to ask questions. They're gonna talk about things that you hadn't even thought of before now, once almost 20 years ago, which <laugh>, I swear, I cannot believe I can say this. I told my brother, I wanted to code my own blogging platform. I actually had created quite a bit of it. Thank you very much. He asked me why I wouldn't just use this brand new thing called WordPress and let someone else do the hard work for me. Now that advice has followed me throughout my career, because if we can find it's not just shortcuts, but if we can find help, if we can find aid in places and make our lives easier so we can go further faster. Why, why wouldn't we do that? Now, if you have a chance, I highly recommend taking time away from your normal environment and focusing. And this was the other part of this that I think that really worked for me last week was I wasn't in my home office. And I wasn't trying to do this on my own. Now, if you listen to the podcast regularly, which thank you by the way, mom and a couple of my friends, you know, that I just went to Colorado a couple months ago to literally do this very thing. I had this big idea that I was going to step outside my business and, and do my business. And instead I arrested because that is what I needed. And it was really beneficial for me and my business, but doing it by myself was kind of hard because I wasn't really sure exactly where to start going to a conference, run by experts who have been there before. That was priceless. I have a structure now to make trips like Colorado. If I decide to do that again, far more successful, but there's nothing like having not only educational resources available to you, but other people in the room with you dealing with the same thing. Let me just give you an example. I have been trying to figure out a way to word some messaging for literally six months. And I have struggled to find the right verbiage. I knew it wasn't right, but I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. The first session and literally 10 minutes working with my new bestie sitting next to me, I had a better message than I had spent six months trying to say, because I had feedback from someone who was further along from me, who understood my client base, but also who could get outside of my business, listen to me and go, oh, why don't you say it like that? It was simple and easy. And it was so much faster than me trying to go it completely alone. And that's really just the whole point of this episode. Like I said, again, this is probably largely just for Marisa in about two months.<laugh> when I lose some steam, but you probably think the only way to grow your service provider business is to hire a team. The trick is you get other people to carry out the services you're doing, and then you're able to sell more. You have more capacity. There are a lot of ways that you can scale that don't necessarily mean hiring people. Now, especially if you're like me and you literally spend that you're afraid of being the boss and you're afraid to get outta client work, cuz you really kind of love the work that you do. Looking at different ways to scale your business can be a game changer. You know, who might have ideas to help you go further, faster, a coach or an industry community they've been there. They've done that. Utilize their expertise. Now the one thing about having a coach as part of the community or somebody who's kind of facilitating is it helps when you get overwhelmed by what everybody else is doing. You have someone to focus you and keep you on track. Shout out to Pete who has loved doing that for me for the last few months. It's his favorite. Now this all sounds great, but how did I lock into such an amazing community you might be wondering? I definitely did not. I have actually been following the founder and the owner of this community and this coaching program for years, I've soaked up everything he had to offer for free. For years. I finally decided to jump in because I was ready to get and ask for help. That's the thing I think you have to be mentally ready. So if you struggle with asking for help in this whole entire episode is like, Ugh, I don't know. Start small. Just find a Facebook group that you can join and get used to posting in there or posting responses. And then maybe asking for help as a post, but just get used to asking for help a little bit before you dump money into a program you're not gonna use because you're scared to ask for the help that you know that you need. Now. Personally, I chose Troy and his team because they're all former or current agency owners who have scaled their digital agencies, grown their teams and done exactly what they're telling me to do. But I also picked them because I knew they had this invaluable community of other agency owners attached to this whole thing. Now, when I, when we're looking for a coach, I want you to make sure that you're looking for one, who's actually done what you're trying to do. Not just theoretically, but they've been there. They know what it's like to run a service provider business because they've done it. They know what it's like to be an attorney virtually. They know what it's like to help clients one on one, whatever it is that your business does find someone who understands what it's like to run your business. And hasn't built a successful one. Now they might teach you their system and that's totally okay. But personally, I would look for somebody who is flexible to the fact that your business is a little unique. Not all businesses are built the same. They're not as unique as we think, believe me. I keep getting told that not all businesses are the same though. And it needs to adapt to fit you and your lifestyle. Now they also should hold space. Your coach for you to be, to go quiet, to mess up, to ask for help with the same things over and over again, because face it, we're all human. I would recommend that you follow a few communities and choose your mentor and your people wisely. But if you do it, it could be just the thing you need to shortcut your own businesses growth. Thank you all for tuning into our show this week to catch more captain coder, you can subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast app. Now, if you have any questions or you wanna learn more about digital marketing and how it can help grow your online business, follow us on Instagram@captaincoder or visit us online at captcoder.com. Can't wait to. Talk to you all again next. Week.