Hey you guys, welcome back to the podcast. And if this is your first time listening, welcome to the show! I'm Amber, I am your host and the creator of the Conscious Coach Podcast, the founder of the Conscious Coach Academy, and I'm really glad that you're here. For those of you who are new, I wanted to give a quick introduction, cause I know we have a lot of new listeners.
Back in the day when I graduated college, I thought I was going to be a therapist. I started my family. I found the life coaching industry. I started life coaching, and over the years that I spent coaching people on basically everything, I really fell in love with online business, and so I feel like the podcast really is the culmination of everything that I've learned from coaching and online business.
I feel like it is the blend of both worlds where the inner work, where belief work meets online business. And so, if this is the first time you're listening, welcome! I'm so glad that you're here, and if you've been a long-term listener, welcome back. So today we're going to be talking about build mode, how I'm slowing down to speed up.
I wanted to give kind of a sneak peek or like a backstage pass to what I'm literally doing, because you might've heard this, slow down to speed up, but what does that actually mean? Right. I kind of brainstormed. How do I want to demonstrate this? What do I want to talk about? And so I'm just going to give you basically like, if you were to spy on me, this is what I'm up to.
So the concept slowing down to speed up, I think is a really useful term especially when you are maybe doing things different or like me, what has been my work has been evolution and growth over lifetime. That's true for my personal life. That's true for my business. And one of the things that I know to be true is that sometimes you accomplish things and create things that you used to imagine. It used to be an idea and now it's your reality, and sometimes that creates new problems. The reason that I think slowing down to speed up is useful, especially if you've created results that used to feel impossible, now there's like a new vision and we're going to talk about that. What got you here won't get you there.
What I mean by that, and I'll give you a very real example. When I first started my coaching business, everything that I was thinking about, everything that I was focused on solving for, was basically creating one-on-one clients. How do I create one-on-one clients? Now in my business, that is not what I'm working on solving for.
In fact, I have a lot of one-on-one clients and I have a lot of group coaching clients, and so I'm solving different problems. That means that I'm not trying to go fast anymore. I am slowing down to solve different problems. If you find yourself in a situation where you feel like you outgrown a certain phase of your business or what you've been doing, up to this point, you know that that won't get you where you want to go, like this episode is for you.
I'm calling it build mode because I think to build something bigger than what you've created, you have to slow down to speed up. The first thing that I'm doing, like I said, this is a kind of behind-the-scenes episode.
The first thing that I'm doing now is I have been pulling my group coaching program clients. And if you're in the Matrix, you know, I've been like, “Hey, fill out this form,” “Hey, answer this question,” because I am refining my product to the point where it is an amazing experience for my clients.
I'm asking them what's the most useful thing that you've experienced? What's the thing that you would get rid of? How do you like to be in a community? What platform is the best? What do you like? What do you not like? What do you wish I was doing more of? What do you wish I was doing less of?
Those kinds of questions that I can refine the experience that they're having. I think that it is useful to ask for feedback. I remember early on in my career, I did not want feedback because I was a people pleaser and I had a very fragile ego. I didn't want to hear what was going wrong. I see that as a very rookie mistake because now I'm like, who are the best people to tell me how to make this best?
It's the people who are in the program. I think by asking them for feedback and asking them to tell me how I can improve, I can then deliver it and then they'll stay. That has been very, very useful. If you are building something, ask your current clients what you can do to make it better and what they love about it.
Number two is that I am hiring my dream team. I did this in my episode CEO mode, a few episodes back. I talked about all the people that I have in my life and business that are supporting me, and it is a lot. I have nannies. I have house cleaners. I have a CFO person who does my business and personal taxes and bookkeeping.
Now, I have a social media agency who's going to help me on Instagram and Facebook. I have a podcast manager, an editor, shout out Allyse. I've had coaches and mentors. I have a coach right now. I have a fitness coach. I have so many people in my life in business. I have a designer, shout out Rebecca.
Like I have so many people who are supporting me in building my business so that I can get time back to work on the things that drive revenue that only I can do. The visionary type work of the business, also coaching my clients. They want to work with me, and so I show up for them, of course. And that has allowed me to slow down to speed up.
And what that means is actually there's two things: thinking time. So, when I hand something off, like handing a podcast off or handing a majority of my social media content, etc. that gives me time back. I think the mistake would be not using that time or filling that time with busy work because the whole message today is how to slow down to speed up. And so slowing down is uncomfortable. That means that I fill my time with things that are slower in nature. The things that I listed are like thinking time. So I spend time writing, I spend time thinking, I spend time imagining, and refining my ideas.
I've been spending time refining my sales pages. If you go to ambersmith.com/academy, you can see I've been working on the Conscious Coach Academy page. I've been working on my onboarding sequence for the Matrix and the Conscious Coach Academy. That looks like emails and gifts and storing their data and things like that.
I've also been thinking about leverage. So one of the things, in full disclosure this is a great problem to have but this is what happens, is you solve new problems as you evolve in business is I have big ambition for the Conscious Coach Academy and the Matrix, and this podcast, which are leveraged offers and leveraged ways of serving the world versus my one-on-one.
Which I've said this before, I love one-on-one. There really is nothing like it. I think I have a really cool relationship with my clients. It's like a strategic partnership. It's a mentorship. I feel like it is concierge where I really am there for them in so many different ways beyond what I can do for my group coaching clients.
One-on-one is very hard to create leverage around because you're helping one person. So you're limited by time, and that's not a problem. Like I said, I love having my one-on-one clients and I very much plan on keeping it. That being said, it does strap me for time a little bit because I have clients that I'm either having calls with or I'm in Voxer with.
One of the things that has been on my mind is how do I slow down to a speed up and create leverage? I've done this in different ways, but I think I'm ready to really pull that lever in my business where it's massive, not like huge, but where I am creating more leverage in my business.
And to me, the words that go along with that are automation, bigger audience, more clients in the Conscious Coach Academy without sacrificing the level of service that I offer. If you're in the academy, you're going to start seeing some new ways I can support you in the form of coaching calls, Q&A's, communities, things like that, that go beyond just content.
One of the things that I think a lot of coaches do is we use content to create leverage like a course or a podcast or things like that. But one of the things that I've been answering is how do I see support, not just content and teaching, but how do I create leverage where it's support?
Today, I actually had a call with Jade who, she's a team coach for the Matrix. She hosts her own calls. And I've been imagining like, what else can I add in the form of support and coaching and live support, not just, here's this course. It's how do I actually help you execute?
And so that's kind of been what I've been thinking about, and that requires me to slow down. I can't do it. I have to be strategic. I have to think about it. I have to research, I have to ask questions. That has been on my mind as well is how can I create leverage so that I can help more people and grow my business beyond being strapped for time with one on one, which is a problem.
Like I said, it's not that I don't love one-on-one coaching. I do, but there are different problems with one-on-one than there are with groups or courses. One of the things that I have found myself doing is revisiting the fundamentals, and this is another like ping.
If you want to slow down to speed up, you have to revisit the fundamentals, and for a business that looks like how do I make this an irresistible offer? How am I taking care of myself so that I can keep giving to my business? What is my ideal calendar? What kind of people do I want in this program?
Where are we going? Reimagining the biggest vision that I can hold, and that has been a huge piece for me. For many of you, some of what you're experiencing right now, you used to dream about. It used to feel out of reach and now you're living it. One of the things that I've shared a lot is to be in the miracle.
If you're new to this podcast, to me, be in the miracle means that you are in awe of the opportunity that you have as a coach to do this work. It is amazing that I can turn on my computer, turn on my mic, and have this conversation with you wherever you are. Maybe you're driving. Maybe you're on the other side of the country.
Maybe you're listening to this in five years. That's leverage and it's amazing what a gift we have to do this work. Part of reflecting on all the growth that you've had and really owning like some of what you're experiencing today, you used to dream about. I know for me, that's true. When I was brand new, I can remember the energy and the feeling that I had when I would wake up in the morning, imagining what it would be like to have a platform, to have a community of clients, to have a fully booked coaching practice, and now I wake up and that's my reality.
So I have to reimagine a big vision. I have to choose again. I have to expand what I believe is possible because I have achieved what I used to think was impossible. This is like the infinite game.
When you achieve something, you just pick another mountain to climb. You saw a peak, you climb the mountain, and then you got to the top of the peak and you realized that was just one peak of many, and that's how I feel business is. When you get to the top of a peak and you realize there's another peak. I think that is when you slow down to speed up because you have to make different decisions to get you to that peak if that makes sense.
For me, that has been spending a lot of time getting support, asking myself hard questions, getting perspective from people who have done it before, getting my ducks in a row on the backend with all the data that I manage and the client management system that we use, and automations, and things that support a growing business like this.
I think that there's a lot of simplicity. In fact, one of my friends, Mark Butler has a podcast that he used to call “Beautiful Business.” He used to teach this concept of a beautiful business of one-on-one, and I see why it's so compelling because one-on-one coaching is so simple and beautiful and elegant.
If you have other options in business, and I do, and I don't think it's right or wrong. I'm just observing. It adds more complexity to have group coaching, to have a podcast. I also have a course called the Conscious Coach Academy. There's things that go beyond just one-on-one and adds more complexity, and so I think slowing down to speed up means that you strip away as much complexity as you can to keep it as simple as possible. There's this phrase in online business that's like, “Simple scales, fancy fails,” and I think about that all the time. A lot of my business, I kind of think about, fitness actually, like bulking and cutting. Bulking is when you add muscle. Cutting is when you go on a caloric deficit to strip away fat.
I think that business is very similar. There's bulking where you're adding things, you're making money, you're making offers and you're bulking it up to create cashflow, to create experience, and get new data. Then you have to kind of strip away to reveal this tone, Greek body of a business.
The stripping away and the cut means like, how can we make this simpler? How can we make this more clear? And that's what I meant by revisiting the fundamentals. It's like, how is this an irresistible offer? How am I delivering amazing value? How am I making this as simple as possible for my clients to understand what I do?
How am I making this as simple as possible for me and my team? So that this is something that we can do long-term. So that this is something that we can scale the way that I want to scale it with high levels of support and things like that. If you are also in build mode and you are maybe stripping away some of the complexity to make it simple, or maybe you're in a different season of business, either way, whatever you're building, a lot of times the slowing down to speed up feels vulnerable.
It feels uncomfortable because as entrepreneurs, we get rewarded for taking fast action, and for trying a lot of things. But that phrase, what got you here won't get you there is relevant. Actually, I was just coaching one of my private clients this week, and she had learned to take like massive action, and to try a lot of things. And one of the things I told her was you've gotten rewarded for trying new things, but now you're in a different season of business where the lesson actually is to keep doing the same thing over and over and over again. She was like, “Oh my gosh, you're right.” In the beginning of business especially, we try so many things just to get data, and then we can iterate and try to improve upon the things that were working.
But once you find something that works, then you buckle down, and I told her, you double down. When you find something that works, you double down on what works, and that requires slowing down. It requires to be thoughtful, to reflect, to refine the process and the way that you distribute value, the way that you onboard clients, the way that you create content, and all of the things that go into building a business.
When I think of the word build mode, slowing down to speed up, it is almost like a counterintuitive approach to success. When I was a brand new coach, I sold a lot more things frequently, and maybe you've been here when you watched me do this. I would sell things on social media all the time.
I learned that that was only sustainable for a short period of time because I wanted to build something a lot bigger than that. So I started observing people who are ahead of me in business, and I noticed that they weren't selling as much as I was. They were very intentional. They slowed it down to speed up.
So what I have learned to do is to do those things myself. To slow down, to be more intentional, to have a longer, ramp up to a sales experience where I ask for the sale. It has required counterintuitive thinking. If you are also in this phase, I just wanted to speak to that because it doesn't feel super comfortable.
One of my clients, this was such a good example, she was like, it's the caterpillar to the butterfly, like they go into goo, and so she's like, I think I'm just in the goo. That's such a good example of growth. Sometimes you're in the gooey-ness, and it doesn't feel great.
That's how I feel a lot of the time. It doesn't feel amazing, but it allows you to build the vehicle that will get you where you want to go. I hope that this was helpful for you. If you feel encouraged to slow down, this is what it's been looking like for me: asking for data, asking for feedback, getting support, hiring my dream team, spending more time thinking, spending more time refining my sales process and my onboarding process, creating more leverage, which is more of like a CEO move than a coach move.
Leverage is harder and it requires different skills. So signing a one-on-one client doesn't take creating a sales page and creating launch messaging and having an automation and all these things, but group programs do.
And so leverage takes more time on the front end. You have to build it and then you get to automate it, but it's a different skill set, so it takes literally you slowing down to speed up. The other things that I mentioned was revisiting the fundamentals of like an irresistible offer, delivering value, boundaries, self-care, ideal calendar, and then tapping into your big vision again. Reimagining your big vision. If you've accomplished so much of what you set out to accomplish, now what? Well, it's time to dream bigger because we love the pursuit of growth.
We love the feeling of expansion. We love progress. Once you accomplish something, all you do is just set another bar. Another peak to climb, and that's the game. I love Simon Sinek's book, “Infinite Game” because I resonate so much. I feel like personal growth is an infinite game. I feel like business is an infinite game. It never really ends, and the point isn't to win. The point is to keep playing. When I think of this whole concept of build mode, slowing down to speed up, it's so that you can play the infinite game of growth, the infinite game of business, and so I hope that this was helpful.
The last metaphor I'll share, cause this really resonated for me, is I feel like in the beginning of business, you are learning how to ride a bike. You're learning how to make offers. You're learning how to talk about what you do. You're learning how to close clients on a consult.
You're learning how to ask for the sale in a compelling way. You're learning how to collect money and to make recurring revenue and all these things. Then you get to a phase in business where you have to get off the bike so that you can get into a car. I feel like that is what I have been doing is I have left the bike so that I can get in the car, and I know that there are infinite levels to this.
I know entrepreneurs who get out of the car to get into an airplane, and there's entrepreneurs who get out of the airplane to get into a rocket ship. Right? I'm not there, and so I can only speak to where I am, but I feel like hiring my team, getting fully booked one-on-one, and starting to book out my courses and my group coaching programs, have been me getting into the car and then we optimize the car and then maybe one day I'll get in an airplane and do something else.
But that is where I'm at right now, and so it's felt uncomfortable because you have to stop pedaling the bike. When I work with clients who are also doing this, when they start to have a group coaching program or a membership, or they raise their prices to be a high ticket coach, cause that's a form of leverage as well, there's this feeling of am I doing it right?
Is this okay? I stopped pedaling the bike. Is everything all right? It's like, yes, because you were walking and getting into a car. They can go further, they can go faster, they can do things that a bike can't. If that metaphor resonates, one, get a mentor.
That has been huge for me. I have gotten mentors that helped me get off of my bike and into a car and helped me optimize the car, to use that metaphor. I think mentorship is really powerful for this because there's so many little details that go into getting into a car that I think it's really useful to get a mentor who is doing what you want to do.
I also think just acknowledging that it's really uncomfortable to stop pedaling your bike because your has gotten to you where you want to go. But a bike can only do so many things. If you've been feeling limited by your bike, whatever that means to you, maybe it's like time to add a group program.
Maybe it's time to raise your prices. Maybe it's time to start a podcast, whatever it is. Getting off the bike to me means I'm adding leverage to my business that I can go further and faster. Just know it's super uncomfortable, but that is growth, and that's the price that we pay to create the impact and the income that we can envision.
And so build mode, baby. Slow down to speed up. I hope this was helpful. Thank you for being a listener, and if you're new, welcome. Thank you for being here. I'll talk to you next week.
