Ever feel trapped by your own success? Like your business runs your life?
Well, working harder isn’t always the answer, and today we’re going to discuss how to scale, minus the burnout.
In this episode, Samantha sits down with Jason Lee, founder of Concierge Business Advisors, to uncover the secrets to building a lifestyle business that scales to seven figures.
Jason shares his own transformative journey from burnout to thriving entrepreneur, offering actionable insights on designing a business that fits your life — not the other way around.
If you’re ready to break free from the overwhelm and build a business that not only scales but also enhances your lifestyle, this episode is a must-listen. Get ready to pinpoint where your business stands and take action towards creating your seven-figure lifestyle business today.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- Jason’s entrepreneurial journey plus lessons learned (01:02)
- How failures provide critical insights, paving the way for better decision-making (02:52)
- The value of choice a lifestyle business offers (04:38)
- How passion and purpose reveals itself through action, not waiting (07:39)
- Want clarity and purpose? Know what you don’t want (09:29)
- How to break through the mid-six figure ceiling without losing the essence of your business (11:56)
- The value of allowing others to shine in their own zone of genius (17:38)
- Overcoming the fear of hiring and delegation (20:44)
- The often-overlooked trade-offs that come with scaling your business (25:28)
- Essential systems for a business to consistently operate at the seven-figure level, even without you at the helm (35:51)
- The critical role of maintaining your passion and energy levels as you scale (44:18)
- Jason explains his Business Growth Scorecard (50:08)
- The power of taking immediate action on a single insight from this conversation (51:26)
QUOTES
“I think that there’s a belief that success comes from less failures, but I believe the opposite. I don’t see those failures as failures, I believe they’re ‘learnings’. We learn more from the things that don’t go right, than the things that do go right.” – Samantha Riley
“It’s more about having a lifestyle and having a business that feeds into your lifestyle. You wrap your business around your lifestyle so that it fuels that, whatever that lifestyle may be.” – Jason Lee
“The clearer you are and the more specific you are about where you want to go, the better your results are going to be. But if you’re not sure at all, it’s better to start with what you don’t want, because you can push those things away at least from you, and you can start moving in the right direction.” – Jason Lee
“If you make a decision over here, it is going to impact something over there. There is always a trade off, and you really need to understand and get clarity on what trade offs you are willing to take and which ones you’re not willing to take.” – Samantha Riley
“You might have a really great year where you hit seven figures, but if your systems can’t maintain that, you’re not going to stay a seven-figure earner.” – Jason Lee
“Sometimes it’s not just that you’re losing passion for whatever your business is. Sometimes it’s just that you’re exhausted. If you’re depleted, you’ve got nothing to give.” – Samantha Riley
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ABOUT JASON LEE
Jason is an avid learner and connector. His company mission is to design custom operations systems for growing businesses. We can help you operate at scale, so you can be free to lead with vision and without overwhelm, and enjoy the rewards of a thriving business
WHERE TO FIND JASON LEE
- Website: https://www.cbalifestyle.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-lee-56ab071a/
CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA RILEY
Facebook: Samantha Riley
Instagram: @thesamriley
LinkedIn: Samantha Riley
Twitter: @thesamriley
TRANSCRIPTION
Samantha Riley 0:02
Welcome to today’s episode of Influence By Design. If you are someone that is looking to build a lifestyle business and take that lifestyle business to seven figures with clarity and peace of mind, then today’s episode is for you. I’ve invited Jason Lee to come and chat with us. So welcome to the podcast, Jason, it’s great to have you here.
Jason Lee 0:25
Yeah, thanks for having me, Sam.
Samantha Riley 0:27
Now I’m really excited to talk about this, because from two different perspectives. One, you help people do this, but you’ve got a really cool story of how things have gone in your business that’s I believe, and we didn’t really chat about this, that’s given you so much more insight to be able to help your clients to build their business. What I’d love to start with is just share a little bit about the kinds of things that you help your clients with now, and the types of people that you work with.
Jason Lee 1:02
Definitely. So you know, my business is called Concierge Business advisors, or CBA for short, and how we help business owners is when we usually come in when most business owners are in hyper growth. They’re starting to grow. They’ve figured out their sales and marketing, and now they have clients coming in. But this is where it kind of things start to break down sometimes, where they start to experience stress or burnout because their services or ability to deliver can’t keep up with how much they’ve sold or like the incoming clients. So when we work with them, we create custom growth and scale maps for their businesses so that they can advance with clarity and confidence knowing exactly what the next steps will be for their business. And I mean, it links a lot back to my own personal journey in business, which is, like when I first started, I’ve this, this business would probably be the third or fourth business that I’ve started. I failed all the other ones before in different ways, like one of them, I kind of broke even, the other one, I ended up with a lot of debt. You know, that was not fun, but I learned so much from those experiences and, like, fed those all back to what I do today, to really inform because, because I think, like, if you’re not failing, you’re not really trying hard, right? You’re not putting yourself out there. And, yeah, it’s so huge, though, it’s like that, the first couple of businesses actually helped me overcome that fear of failure, because I knew that if I kept going, I would succeed in the places I needed to, right, rather than like, oh, well, what if I fail? And then they, a mentor of mine, had said back then, like, you only really fail if you give up at that point and you stop going, you know. So that’s how we help people now. I’m not sure where you want to go in terms of, like, how we can go with this, but like, there’s so many things I’d love to share.
Samantha Riley 2:52
Absolutely and I think that, well A, thank you for being vulnerable and even just sharing that piece, because I am a big believer that the more we fail, the more insight we actually have. And it’s really interesting that I’ve had a client that came to me probably about 10 years ago that had been with a mentor that had luck favour him, you know, we, I don’t know if you, what’s that book? Oh, my goodness. Now I can’t even remember what it’s called. Let’s just cut that bit out, Ria. That he had a mentor that had very, sort of had a few wins along the way, let’s just say, and so he always said, you know, this is the way you do it, this is the way you do it. And she came to me and she said, I just can’t make that happen like that. And I said, because there’s not just one way to do it, and by me having all of these failures, I understood that there was multiple ways of doing everything. So I think that there’s this big belief that success comes from less failures, but I believe the opposite, and I don’t see those failures as failures. I believe that they’re learnings, because we get so many more learnings from things that don’t go right. And by you doing that, I believe that that helps your clients, because you’ve got such a great insight. Let’s talk about this lifestyle business. When you say lifestyle business, because that’s how we started off, what do you specifically mean by lifestyle business?
Jason Lee 4:38
Oh, well, for, I guess for me, it’s really close to my heart, because when I first started in business, I worked my butt off. You know? I worked hours and hours and hours, and really what it became to look like was my life revolved around my business. So everything in my life was kind of going in to help my business grow. And, you know, that’s one way of doing business, and that’s one way that, you know, with massive hustle and grit, and you push through, you get a lot of steam going, right? But when it came to lifestyle business, though, you know, my life started to getting a little more complicated. I got married, you know, I had my first kid. I just had my second and I want to be in a lot of places at the same time, like sometimes Sam, I wish I could clone myself, put myself one person on Daddy duty, one person running over there doing more podcasts or talking to people, right? And making sales, and then another just chilling on a beach, because I need someone to be relaxing as well.
Samantha Riley 5:38
Yeah, yeah.
Jason Lee 5:42
And that’s where lifestyle like, like our website’s not even Concierge Business Advisors, although I have the domain. We named it cbalifestyle.com because we wanted to flip it around where it’s more about having a lifestyle and having a business that feeds into your lifestyle. You wrap your business around your lifestyle so that it fuels that, whatever that lifestyle may be like, if you are hardcore, you want to be travelling all the time and working those long hours, and because it gives you joy and it puts you out there, you’re expanding on your passion, then let the business fuel that, but let yourself have a choice, rather than the other way around, where it’s like, I wouldn’t be able to make my business work if I weren’t putting in these long hours, you know what I mean?
Samantha Riley 6:23
Yeah, I do know, and I think that the word there is choice, because we want different choices at different times in our lives. So when I very first started my business, I had two young children as well, like you do now, and I decided to leave my corporate job that was a nine to five and start my own business. And I started a business that was a dance studio, which means that, essentially, you’re on and you’re teaching and you’re in the studio after school hours. Well, I was trying to spend more time with my children, and I inadvertently started a business that worked in all the hours and filled up all my hours when they weren’t at school. So it took me a little bit to be able to flip that around, so I understand what choice is, where now my children are all adults, and they’ve grown up, and I enjoy to work and I enjoy to travel and work. So it’s very, very different. So choice is where it’s at. And I think that as humans, as people, so not at, coming from the business owner perspective, it’s really important to know what you want your life to look like before you even start on this journey, right?
Jason Lee 7:39
Yeah, like that is, that is so true and and I’ll play devil’s advocate for a moment, because when I first started, that was my mentor’s first thing. So I found a mentor. He was teaching me how to become a successful business person. And the first thing he said is, you need to know your purpose, your why. You know, like you need that thing that gives you your reason for being, the passion, and for the life of me, Sam, I had no freaking clue. Like, I was like, what’s my purpose? What do I do? Like, how do I do this? And, you know, for a long time, my purpose was to find my purpose. I said, I’m working my butt off here, and I’m trying a lot of different things, because I don’t know what my purpose is, but maybe through doing this stuff, I could find it and, and, you know, like, that was kind of like toughest time, because, like, it is so core. That’s actually one of the places we start when we help other business owners, is like we ask them, like, is this machine you’ve created going to take you to where you want to go? And how do you fit into this business? Right? Like, in this business, are you the one operating all the levers, or can you step out for a bit and have someone else operate the levers? Maybe a great executive assistant or a great partner who might help out with some of the fulfilment side. How are you doing it? Right? Like, can you take a break? So that was the biggest thing. But then in purpose, as I continued in my business, though, for anyone out there who is not sure, like, they’re like, Well, all I know is this, I have this business thing going, or I have this calling to start a business, and I don’t really know purpose beyond that. Good. I mean, that’s where you start your purpose net right now, if that’s your calling, is to start there, start there, and move forward, but constantly look for clarity on what you do. And the best places I often start is, what do you not want? Right?
Samantha Riley 9:28
Like, oh yes.
Jason Lee 9:29
You want 80 hours a week? Oh well, heck no, right? Like, okay, well, how about 40, 30, 20? Like, like, where’s the number, right? And if you can start with where you don’t want to be, that’s a great filler before you move into exactly what you do want. Because I do believe that the more clear you are and the more specific you are about where you want to go, the better like, the better your results are going to be. But if you’re not sure at all, it’s better to start with what you don’t want, because you can push those things away at least from you, and you can start moving in the right direction.
Samantha Riley 10:03
Yeah, I love that, and I often ask my clients that, because it’s so much easier to articulate what you don’t want than to really figure out what you do want. The other thing I loved that you said is you don’t need to know your purpose right at the beginning. The reason I love this so much is back in around 2010, I separated from my husband, and I had this whole, everyone was saying, you know, what’s your purpose? What’s your purpose? And I was like, I don’t know. And I got so frustrated that it actually froze me. I didn’t know what to do. So I’m like, I didn’t know my purpose. Where once I flipped that and just said, oh, you know what? I’m just going to focus on things that bring me joy, things that make me happy. Well, as soon as it was that, it was like, Oh, now I can do whatever I like, as long as that makes me happy, and it will just, it will materialise, because our purpose isn’t something that we actually find. It’s within us already. And by doing things that bring us joy when we can uncover what that is. And I think that for anyone that’s listening that is frustrated or frozen because they don’t know what their purpose is, it really doesn’t matter as much as what people say it does.
Jason Lee 11:17
And that’s so good, like where you talk about focusing on what brings you joy, right? Because I believe the feeling of joy or happiness as you do something is kind of like a direct line to your purpose, it doesn’t say exactly what your purpose is, but you’re like, Wow, I feel joy doing this, and I don’t feel joy doing that, right? And so it can at least be the compass, right? It’s like, when you have a compass, it points towards north. It doesn’t tell you what’s in like, what’s north of you, but it tells you you’re moving in the right direction. And using joy as a compass is an incredible way to seek that when you’re not so clear yourself, you know?
Samantha Riley 11:56
Yeah, loving this conversation. Alright, so lifestyle business is really something that allows you to live the life that you want. Now let’s talk about how to create that for someone. You’ve helped someone design a plan for a six-figure coaching business to take them to seven figures. Now what’s really interesting is that there is a sticking point, I believe, in a coaching business in around the mid-six figures, where it is very un-lifestyle like you sort of, you know, you’re hustling to grow. You’re hustling to grow. Things start happening. Clients start coming in, and all of a sudden, and I noticed that with lots of people, there’s this point of, ah, overwhelm. Don’t know what I’m doing. So can you talk us through because that, that look on your face just says it all, you’ve seen it. Is that, I know that you’ve worked with people in this way? Is this something that you notice with them?
Jason Lee 12:59
Yeah, yeah. Like, there’s always a certain amount. I think there’s, there’s kind of like coaching as a solopreneur, maybe you’re a solo coach, and you run all the levers of your business yourself. I’ve seen, most people stick or kind of start to slow down around 300,000 in revenue, and then, kind of like it then depends on, kind of their unique situation, of like, where that skilling really is before they start to grow, but before they need to shift gears to fix something else right, and, and I guess, like you hit the nail on the head, though, kind of in that mid-six figure zone is where most people kind of start stumbling and, like, the what, what I said is, what I say to my clients is, what got you here doesn’t necessarily get you there anymore, and, and it’s a combination, right? Because I have this term I call Frankenstein businesses, and it’s because, as you’re growing your business, you’re just going to grab whatever fits and start your business. So like, let’s say you start to bring in some leads. Like, what do you do? Well, you go find a CRM or anything that happens to fit whatever you need right now. Like, back then, when I first started, I was like, I need something free and something that’s easy to figure out. So I went on MailChimp, and I said, Okay, we got MailChimp. We stick MailChimp in and we keep running right. Then, I needed a scheduler. I found Calendly, right? And then, now there’s like a bajillion different types of schedulers out there, but I’m, I’m like, I was on Calendly forever, and I’m still on, I’m still on it, right? Yeah, but as you go, you’re going to pick up different pieces, or apps or systems, and they’re not always apps, but they might, it might even be your way of approaching your business, right? Of like, let’s say for client work, if you’re sticking to one on one, then, like, your one on one’s always what you want to do. And then there’s a lot of people now teaching in groups, right, or and then above groups, maybe masterminds, where it’s peer coaching. So when you’re at that point, though, those systems aren’t working anymore. You’re actually too overloaded to realise which systems are failing. And that’s the tough part, right? Because you’re overwhelmed. You’ve just popped, and you’re like, oh my god, like, I just want to shut this whole thing down. And the scary part Sam is some people do, yeah, you know, they have such an amazing gift for that they do for their clients. Maybe it’s an amazing way where they help them transform or break through certain limiting beliefs. But they themselves, they can’t keep up with that. So they recede, and their impact becomes less. And that’s a really sad thing to see, and that’s what makes me so passionate about wanting to make sure, like, well, what if there’s a better way, you know. So I’ll give you this example of a client that I worked with is, he was at six figures, doing pretty well, but he was starting to feel that looming, like, load starting to come up. And this is, like, I guess this is a different part, like, he’s a veteran business owner, so he’s had other businesses before, so before he reached that point, he kind of, he knew it was coming, and he said, well, since I know it’s coming, I’m not going to wait till that happens. And so when we had the chance to meet, we met at a convention. We sat down at a table. He was speaking there about podcasts, actually. So he was speaking there, and when we sat down at a table, talked about what we, what we did, like we immediately looked at each other and said, I think we’re going to hire each other at some point. And a few weeks later, we became clients of each other. And it was, it was such a cool thing. But when I talked to him, I dug into like, what was he doing, and why was he doing it? Right? Like, the purpose, like you said, and his, and I found out, actually, not so much like I did find out his purpose. But what really stood out to me was, hit the fear of what he felt a scale business would be. And so looking at that, it was when he wanted to grow, he wasn’t sure how much he could delegate without losing the soul of his business. You know, he brought such an amazing presence to his like, to his people, to his community, to his peer groups, and he’s like, Well, if I scale, what if it, what if they lose me, and then my business fails because it’s no longer me anymore? And that’s why we really started like when we looked through his business and we identified it, it really landed on well, what was he the best at and what made it you, like, what was his unique ability in there that made his business uniquely his flavour, that attracted people to that business, and we like zeroed in on that.
Samantha Riley 17:38
I’m going to take a breath here, because what you’ve just said is absolute gold. This point is something that I had to do in my dance studio, which was my very first business, because I got to a point where I couldn’t take all the classes. There was no more hours in my week left. I had one other teacher, but it got to a point where I had to hire another, I think I had three teachers at the same time, and we went through this really gritty piece in the middle where the students were like, but we want Sam to be the teacher. We don’t want to go to this other teacher. And this is exactly the same thing that happens in coaching businesses. But what I did then, and it’s what I do now, is exactly what you just said. Where is my zone of genius? And purely focus in on that. And here’s the thing, when you do that, you give other people permission to come in and be in their genius. So I’ll give you an example of that is that, I’ve got, I’ve hired coaches over the years, and something that tends to come up all the time is that they say, I just can’t do it like you do it. And my answer is always, I don’t want you to, that’s why we’ve got you here. Because I want you to be in your zone of genius. I want you to do it the way that you do it. And I think that that’s really important, that we all need to play in our own little playground and be the best at what we do.
Jason Lee 19:13
Yeah, and to expand on that, like, the little playground that we’re playing in that we might feel like, Oh, we’re kind of taking that 100% and only focusing on that 20% that we’re good at, inside of that 20% is like a whole nother world. So like, don’t think that you’re getting smaller just by focusing on what you’re uniquely good at. But I mean, there’s a whole other world of ability, of like depth that you can go into to expand upon that. And like, when you make the room for other people to join you, like the pie gets bigger at the same time, doesn’t it?
Samantha Riley 19:49
Absolutely and when you were saying that, I immediately think of a laser. You know, if you get a light and you focus it in tight enough, then it’s, like, extremely potent, extremely powerful, but when it’s, you know, not as focused, we still see the light, but it’s very, very different.
Jason Lee 20:07
Yeah, it’s completely different.
Samantha Riley 20:11
I love that. So what is a way that you could help our listeners to really understand, is there some sort of questions or some sort of, I guess, strategy or sequence that you can take people through to help them to get real clarity on what it is that is going to be the thing that they need to focus on in their business, whether it’s, you know, like, what makes them better. What’s going to bring in the most money? Whatever that is.
Jason Lee 20:44
Yeah, I mean, it all starts with what do you want, right? And I know we’re back at purpose, right? We’re back at purpose again, but it all stems from there. And so starting with what do you want, I find out there’s actually one step before that that will make everything a lot easier too, is if you’re looking to grow your business now and you’ve got it flowing, or you’ve got some clients, first figure out, like, Well, what do you do, right? And, you know, I might, it might be pretty easy for some coaches. Like, well, I coach people like, well, I have a, let me ask you a little further, like, how exactly do you do what you do when, when someone meets you, and from from when they meet you to when they decide to become a client of yours, and you bring them in as a client, what exactly do you do with them? Do you say certain things? Do you work certain angles, right, like or or do you, are you just you, but even as just you, what do you do in that process to make them know, like, and trust you, so that they become a client? And then after, this is actually where a lot of people start. People stop though, like they’re great at this, because marketers say that all the time, right? But the next part is now, once they become your client, what kind of experience do they go through, that transforms them fundamentally, right? That allows them to grow or shift? And if you can first map out what do you do there? This is actually the first step in our process when we work with a client, is we figure out not just how they do, what they do, but what happens, and exactly when. Through this process with our other client, we found out that his gift was actually not the content. So he was a great coach, you know? He taught people amazing skills, and they were able to move forward with success in podcasting. But his unique ability we found, after we mapped this, we mapped out all the things, we found that he made the most impact in facilitating conversations, which was like totally different from his podcasting part, right? Although podcasts are conversations, but the teaching part of that was not bad. It was pretty good, right? You know, I don’t ding him on that, right? But he was, he was good there, but he was amazing in the way that he facilitated conversations. So when, when we look through his entire process of where he showed up, how he did all these pieces, we found that with the facilitation, that’s the one piece for his current business that he should not give up for anything. But then when we found that, we found that he could delegate all of the rest, and that ratio was about 20 to 80% right? That 20% of him focusing on facilitation to the 80% of like, maybe admin work, scheduling, follow up, community, any community work, any of those different pieces, he could bring in other people that might have an even stronger unique ability in those areas to grow his business. And so same thing when you’re going through this process is when you map it out, you can really, you look at your process and say, Where is kind of like that part that really does it for people, that makes clients love me and want to stay with me forever, right? And you might bring your clients into this. You might map it out. Be like, Hey, Tracy, like, Hey, we’ve worked together. This is the process we went through with you. And can I ask, where were those points in our relationship that truly changed how you saw things, or truly made the difference for you, that would make you want to love that and do even more? Just a few of those simple questions will really like, I think, man, it would transform the way you work your business, because you’ll know more and more where you show up. And there’s that quote of you can’t see the label when you’re inside the bottle. Never do it yourself, right? You do this yourself, it’s going to be tough. You get a little insight. But if you leverage friends, family, colleagues, clients, and get like, once you’ve done the initial work to map the stuff out, if you can get their insight, support to that, you’ll get some incredible insights to your business.
Samantha Riley 24:47
100%, I can agree with that. About 10 years ago, I did that process, and what I did was sent it out to clients. I sent it out to a couple of past clients. I sent it to people that knew me really well, family, and I sent it also to people that didn’t know me so well, that maybe were like colleagues, but didn’t really have an insight into my business. And it was fascinating to see how the answers came across from all of those different places. And I think that gives you greater depth of understanding of how it all looks, so highly agree that that process is really valuable.
What I’d love to know is, once you’ve got clarity on what that 20% is, and you’re ready to, and you, yeah, I want to get rid of all the 80%, at first people go, yes, I want to get that off my plate. But then what I’ve noticed is that this fear drops in, but I can’t, I don’t know how to hire those people. I’m afraid to hire them because I don’t want, you know, that many, that much wages that I have to pay out each week. I’m afraid to let go of it, because what if someone’s not as good as me? What is the first step to being able to get that 80% off your plate?
Jason Lee 26:08
Oh, well, this gets into something that I’m that, like, I’m really passionate about that I don’t sell. You know, there’s all, there’s all the stuff that I do for myself, which is personal development, when the fear sets in that is, well, let me rewind a bit. I believe that business can be one of the greatest personal development vehicles in the world. Could not agree with you more, and I do it to great lengths. Sam, like I’ve used my business in terms of, like, metrics. Like, in business, everything is numbers, right? Like, you can see the metrics, you can see the numbers, and it often shows in my business earlier than it does in my personal life. If I’m off, right? And what do I mean by that? Like, well, maybe I’m, you know, just prior to this call, right? We were talking about, I was, I was acting a lot out of fear when I had been developing my business over the last year, because I kind of saw the world of like, like, the world was kind of moving in a strange way. I got a little more fearful, and I said, Wow. Like, I need, I need a like, I want to make some extra money, or put away some more money that I’m doing now to protect my family, to have some assets stored aside, to set up certain things so that my family would be protected as it’s growing, you know, because I’m like, man, like, this world is kind of going in a weird way. And my kids are, like, a couple years old, what’s going to happen in 10 years, or, like, 20 years, when they become adults? And I started freaking out, midnight, like, not a fun way to, like, think about before you go to bed. But, yeah, I was in the spiral, you know. And I was in that spiral for about a year, you know, where, like, I was really trying to structure my business in that way. And I found that through acting out of fear, my results were like, piss poor, you know, like, like people that I normally would do really well with, or I would, like sales that I would do really well on, they didn’t come through, the energy, I mean, another thing is just that, the way I showed up in my work every day, it started with a lot of passion, and then as it started to go on, like, six months later, I was kind of like, Man, this is becoming kind of a slog. And at first I thought maybe I wasn’t working out right, or I wasn’t eating right, which was also true, right? But it was all this huge combination of me being off. And when I saw it in the numbers, though, I looked back and I said, wow, it showed up in my sales conversions. It showed up in my ability to transform my clients and even how I worked with my team earlier than it did in my personal life with my family, because I’m huge on family, you know? I really try to show up as my best there. So when I saw that, I was like, wow, it’s an amazing reflection, right? And so when you start thinking about giving away certain pieces of your business or hiring on another person, one of my biggest fears was I didn’t think I could be a leader. I didn’t want other people depending on me for their living, right? Like their ability, and it scared the Jesus out of me. And oh, man. So what do you do in that step? Right? First, you need to explore why you’re feeling that. Where is that fear coming from? Is it the fear that they won’t, they won’t do it as well as you do, so they might hurt your business? Is it the fear of losing control? Right? Because, because oftentimes, like you hand it to somebody else. They’re doing something out of your sight, and they may be, I don’t know, like, maybe, like you think, like, oh, they might be screaming at your client, or, like, cussing them out, so they’ll never want to work with you again, right? Which they, that almost never happens, right? But a lot of that fear could be happening of like, what? Like, well, what is the next stage? And it all comes down to, well, where do you want to go with it? If you want a lifestyle business, working 10, 20, hours a week while having an income that matches most people’s 40 or 60 or 70 hour weeks, there are some trade-offs that need to happen. And one of those trade-offs is someone needs to be working those hours to serve your clients, to serve your company, and if it’s not you, who is it going to be? And so that was like my kind of my moment when I realised that I said, Well, if someone has to be working those hours for me to get to my lifestyle, I need to work around any limiting beliefs I have around that, and also I need to have a trusted hand that would help me in that process, because I didn’t want to waste any more time. I couldn’t afford to lose clients. So I wanted to invest into somebody who was really good at that, and working alongside someone who can assist you in that as a guide, saying, like, Hey, this is how you zig, and this is when you zag, right, someone like yourself, right? Like, like Sam, like, you’re so good at helping people scale and so, like, you probably have insights of knowing, like, when you set it up, you probably need to have XYZ set up so that you can have an incredible executive assistant, or else they’re just going to leave right. Or vice versa. Like, well, how do you have it set up where you’re not, like, helicopter parenting your team to the point where they just want to get the hell away from you?
Samantha Riley 31:31
Yeah. You freeze them. They can’t be creative. They’re afraid to make decisions.
Jason Lee 31:38
And eventually, then they’ll leave, right? Yeah. So, so really, coming alongside someone who has that experience already, there’s plenty of books out there that talk about this stuff too, but the exact next step really depends on the person at that point of like, maybe you’re already sick and tired of being sick and tired, and you’re like, whatever the solution is, I’m going all in, right? And that would be amazing. If you’re more like me, I was very fearful when I made that realisation, so I took some time to do the research to understand what it would look like. I asked a bunch of colleagues, I hired an expert who would set up organisations of what they thought about it? What did they do? Right? I went to some panels. I did, I took the time to do the research to understand it so that I could move forward.
Samantha Riley 32:27
I love that you mentioned trade offs, because I don’t feel like enough people talk about this, that if you make a decision over here, it is going to impact something over there. There is always a trade off. And you really need to understand what and get clarity on what trade offs you are willing to take and which ones you’re not willing to take, because I think that there’s been, there’s so many, let’s say marketers rather than coaches, that say, you know, you can start a coaching business, and it’s five hours a week, and you don’t need to do anything else, and you can do business on the beach. Well, the trade off is that your clients might not actually like that if you don’t have anyone else helping like and you know, we have seen and heard stories of these people. They haven’t truly understood that to have the time away from the business, you don’t just walk away from it, that there’s something else happening in the background. So I love that you shone a light on that, because I don’t think it’s talked about enough.
Jason Lee 33:33
Yeah, it’s actually, it comes to a lot of clients as a surprise, like in their head, it logically makes sense, and they’re like, Wow, I never thought about that. There’s an hour’s trade off, right?
Samantha Riley 33:45
Yeah, yeah. And the other thing was, I think that you had a really great reframe in what you were talking about then. If I think about a client that I worked with recently, she had been in a position where one of her team members had done some really, really terrible things and had put her business in jeopardy. So she was really afraid of hiring staff, so we reframed it to, you need a team to support you. And it was just the reframe she needed that went, Oh, I don’t want to hire staff, but I do want a team to support me, so we just worked on ways to bring that team in so that they could support her and not put all of the energy that, you know, everything into that team member, like she had before. So I think reframing is a really, really, a great thing to do, and I could hear that that’s definitely what you were doing there.
Jason Lee 34:45
Yeah, it’s like dating, you know? Like, yeah, there’s gonna, you’re gonna have dates that tell you what you don’t want, and you’re gonna have team that tell you what kind of team you don’t want. And that’s okay, right? Because I believe, like, I just believe in humanity. I mean, there’s, there’s great people out there, and there’s not so great, and then there might be terrible people out there, right? But in that timeframe, like there, I trust, I personally, I just trust in the fact that if I continue going with a good heart, with good intentions, but firmly knowing that, like, Hey, I have these boundaries. These are non-negotiables when I work with people, and these are expectations, I believe I’ll find the right people eventually, right, and when I find those right people, I’m going to find a way to keep them with me for life as long as I can. Because if I treat them well, they’ll stay with me. But if not, then, you know, we’ll part ways and hopefully on good terms. But I make it that goal of like, no matter how long someone’s worked with me, I would, my goal is to have them think fondly of that experience no matter where it ended up.
Samantha Riley 35:51
Yeah, I think that’s gorgeous. So, let’s talk about sort of what comes on the other side of that to really scale to seven figures. You know, we’ve got really clear on our zone of genius, where we want to be spending the time, we bring the team in. How do we sort of navigate after that in that high six figures into the seven figures? What are some of the things that people need to be really paying attention to?
Jason Lee 36:19
So, this is where it gets a lot more nitty gritty, right? Because you’re, you go from six to, a lot of the time, your systems that were built for somebody at six figures, they don’t really handle a seven-figure revenue like that well, because what seven figures of revenue usually means is more clients, or higher standards, or a whole combination of all of those things, right? Like more staff, more people. So the biggest thing is actually structure. How have you structured your business to be fully capable of a seven-figure business? And I’m not just talking about a business that just made it to seven figures. I’m talking about a robust system that, like, if someone were to need to leave the next day anywhere in your company, including you, maybe you get sick, maybe you get hit by covid or long covid, and you’re like, I need to take a break for six months. Can your business continue making that seven figures? And that’s what I believe is the aspiration, and that’s what we aim for when we set up a seven-figure business structure, right? Is there always, there needs to be backups. There needs to be different pieces. So it starts with your organisation structure of, okay, with this organisation structure, do you have fail safes, and do you have people that you can fall back on if the job isn’t done correctly, right? Also, though, do you have your own methods of making sure the standards are really high, right? Is it consistent across the board? So, so like, I’ll give you a quick example. One of the clients we worked with was extremely high touch. They work one-on-one with all their people, right? And when they’re doing great, they hit all of the notes, right? The client has an amazing experience when they’re feeling down or when they’re kind of sick, everything kind of starts to slow down. You know, they don’t make the follow up calls as early as they are supposed to. They don’t send the client the after work or the notes from the call that they need to work on for the next call. And so the biggest thing is, well, are those written out? Is there quality onboarding or client experience that makes them feel like they’re treated like, like, like royalty, right? Royalty, plus a boot camp because, you know, like with coaching, they got to do the work too, right? So they could be royalty, and they can be treated really well, but you got to get your stuff done. And so is that kind of dual feeling put in there to make them feel like they’re having a fantastic experience while they grow. For a seven-figure business, all of that stuff is written out, you know, like people should have a checklist, like you got people going through, you yourself, if you’re the one doing it, should be going through that checklist to make sure you’ve hit every single one. Because not only are you now building a seven-figure business, the thing that keeps it seven figures is the reputation that you’re now having, having served those clients, the people who come out the other end, did they speak highly of you, right? Or do they remain silent, or even worse, right? Are they giving you one star reviews on like, like Yelp or something like that, right? It’s a huge difference. And with your systems to seven figures, part of that scaling is being able to let go, right, like letting go and getting other people who are actually better at you in those specific places. And let me tell you, those people are out there. There are people who are, whose unique ability, like their five-star ability, is being an amazing executive assistant, and if you try to make them coach, they would run the hell away from whatever you’re, whatever. And the flip side is, there’s people who are such amazing coaches that they would love to coach, but they don’t want to touch any piece of the business because it freaks them out, or they’ve done it before, and they knew it’s just not for them. Finding those people to partner up with where, where they love the place that they’re in and they want to grow with you as a company is what makes that company. Like, what will help you go from six to seven with relative ease. Now, can you just hustle your way through it? Like, raise your prices, pack more cohorts, or grow your mastermind. Like, yeah, you totally could. But that brings me back to a quote that I learned there’s a, this is a motivational speaker named Jim Rohn, and he said, if you make a million dollars, you best become a millionaire quickly, because if you don’t, soon, that million dollars is going to fizzle out. And the same thing here, like, you might have a really great year where you hit seven figures, but if your systems can’t maintain that, you’re not going to stay a seven-figure earner. So you see a lot of people on their LinkedIn or their profiles, like, Hey, I had a million dollar business. And the question I always have in the back of my head is, I wonder how long that lasted, right? Maybe they hit seven and they’re like, done, right?. And some, it happens, a lot actually, like it happens more than you think. Where they hit, they really hit a million dollars, and then the next year they make, like 100,000. So those are some pieces. I know it’s kind of like a hodgepodge. I wanted to include some stories I did with my clients, but organisational structure, how you set that up, how you find other people and like, put in those right pieces to your business, where it’s a win-win, right? Remember, you don’t want just a team that just does the work. If it’s the win-win, they’re going to put in even more than you expect, and it’s going to be an amazing experience for you, too. And then the last one was, when you approach it, think of it from creating a robust like a seven-figure business making a million dollars or more every single year, is going to be a different strategy than to just make seven figures in a single year.
Samantha Riley 41:59
Absolutely. And you said it was a hodgepodge, but I think that once you get to that level, even though there’s certain structures or what’s the word I’m looking for, oh my goodness, the word’s completely gone out of my head. But there’s certain things that you need to do in your business, they are going to be slightly different for everyone you know, you there are going to be, you know, what’s your funnel and what’s your KPIs, you talked about, it’s sort of, what’s the word you used? You didn’t use this word, but essentially, you’re refining more what you do at the other end. So in your early six figures, where you may not need to notice or pay attention to your marketing KPIs once you’re in that, you know, in that high six figures, seven figures, you definitely do need to be really paying attention to those and that’s why I think it’s worth paying attention to them early on, because it’s easier to grow with them than to try and slap them on as you get busier, you know what I mean? Like, if you’re creating your systems right from the beginning, it’s easier to refine them than to go, oh, we need a system. I saw a post by someone the other day saying that you don’t need to be looking at any systems until you’re at $3 million a year. And I thought, How ridiculous is that? That’s the fastest way to fail. Her and I did not see eye to eye on that one.
Jason Lee 43:34
Yeah, yeah. I mean, wow. Like, I install systems in like six-figure businesses because they need it, right? Yeah, yeah. And I want to speak to that real quick, because, because, like, the thing that stood out to me there was, like, yes, like, you do want to set up a system with the end in mind of, like, well, if I want to make seven figures year after year, it’s a different system, right? But there’s, there’s kind of, and actually, I offer a scorecard on my website that you can take that will help you evaluate those different pieces of your business of like, are you on track to make seven figures like? Are you on track in terms of how your business is set up, and all of those pieces? And I’ll give the link at the end so that you can, you can take a look at that. But there’s actually a secret one. There’s a secret piece to that, like we don’t talk about often, because it’s not really a business thing, but it’s your energy, right? Like, people can make multiple six figures and sometimes even seven figures, despite any way their business is set up, just off of how powerful their passion is. Like, I’ve seen it like, I’ve seen it too many times too for it to be like, for it to be random, like, it’s incredible what they can do, right? And usually what happens, though, is, as you’re growing in your business, that passion starts to flag. It starts to go down a bit. You’re hit by different parts of life, right, like the challenges of life start to wear you down and one of those secret parts of a seven-figure business, though, is how do you continue to cultivate yourself, personally, from a passion and energetic standpoint, that you can continue fueling your business with that energy and excitement, and it comes out different for everybody, right? Like that energy might be you showing up every single day working with the clients. It might also be, well, having that passion to work on the systems of your business, like we, like me and my partner, we nerd out on systems, right? So you don’t often see us going to talk to a ton of people, but our passion into our system really makes it different for the people that work with us and so, yeah, that just came to me. I wanted to mention it because the energy is so key. And if, if you’re if I would bet, actually, though, anyone who’s maybe hit like a high peak, but then their their income is starting to go down, their energy probably shifted at some point where they’re no longer as passionate or as energetic going after what they’re doing, and it’s worthy of exploration at that point.
Samantha Riley 46:09
I just want to speak to that just for a moment, because I think that passion can be reinstated if maybe you take some time out for yourself. So when I think back to our dance businesses, because we had multiple, I wasn’t losing passion in dance, but I was losing passion in life overall, because I was exhausted, because I was hustling. And when I hired my business coach at that time, was the first business coach I worked with, the very first thing he did was look at my calendar and go, Whoa. You cannot sustain this, like I just was, my calendar was so booked full. And the very first thing we did in our first session was mark out where I could take some time out to go to the gym, because I was resentful when I didn’t get to go to my classes in the morning. Then where I was picking up my son from school every Friday afternoon, and we would go and have, you know, a milkshake after every Friday afternoon, because I used to love spending time with him. And, you know, instead of going to pick him up from school I’m going straight back to the business, and that was the very first thing we worked on, and it gave me the passion back in my business, because I had the energy to do life again. So sometimes it’s not just that you’re losing passion for whatever your business is. Sometimes it’s just that you’re exhausted. So you know that, and that’s why I work with my clients to get a date right from the beginning, because if you’re depleted, you’ve got nothing to give.
Jason Lee 47:48
- Oh, that is, that is so good, Sam, like that, I took six weeks off this year to just go to travel, like we went to Taiwan. We stayed there for six weeks, and we came back, and it was part of the dream that I had set up a few years ago of, like, what should a lifestyle business truly look like for me. And this our second trip. So last year we did four weeks. This year, we did six weeks. And my goal is to maybe work up the like, a whole quarter, right? I don’t know if it’s all at once. I think I would go a little stir crazy to not get to, like, chat with cool people and like and grow in business, but like the rest part, like I would, I would also agree, like for the people that I’ve seen, most of the time, it’s actually from exhaustion, like their passion is always there. That passion is the only thing holding them still together through their exhaustion to run their business, you know, and when you add rest to that combination, though, it’s like the fire just bursts out again, and they’re ready, right? And it’s so cool.
Samantha Riley 48:54
Yeah. And you said then that you wanted to work up to taking a quarter out. Just recently, we haven’t done this, but for years and years and years, I used to go away for four to six weeks every winter, because I hate being cold. I’m like a bear that needs to hibernate, when I’m cold, I’m terrible. So we always used to go to the northern hemisphere every winter. And what I noticed, and it turned into a pattern where I would take a week off of just absolutely, you know, vacation time, only vacation time. And I would notice by the second week, it’s like, I want to pick up some books. I want to read. I’ve got books in my bookcase in front of me here that are filled with notes that are usually from week three vacation. Because everything, you know, I get my energy back, and then I just get so excited again, and that’s when I birth new ideas, or, you know, take on new projects, or all these sort of crazy, weird ideas drop in. But it’s because I take time out for all of that to happen. So it’s not that the passion was ever gone. It’s that I’ve given myself space for it to return. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, so good. Now, you mentioned before about your business growth scorecard. I think this is such a valuable resource that you have for people to figure out where they’re at, because obviously, we’ve talked about lots of different things today, and you know, clarity means that you are able to move faster or with more confidence. So where can people go to get access to that business growth scorecard?
Jason Lee 50:28
Yeah, so you can go to cbalifestyle.com/scorecard so that’s CBA, charlie, bravo, alpha, lifestyle com slash scorecard, and everything will be right there. So you can take it. Once you finish too, you’ll get a little bonus of ours that we call The Five Essential Elements of a Scalable Business. So not well, you won’t just get the score. We don’t want to just leave you there. We will, we’re giving you that extra bit to give you any additional things of like recommendations for each of the pieces that we look at for in your scorecard. And of course, you know, you can always contact me directly after that if you have any questions.
Samantha Riley 51:07
Love it. And of course, we’ll put the link in the show notes wherever you’re listening. And for our Australian listeners, this has nothing to do with one of our big four banks. One of our big four banks in Australia is CBA, so it has nothing to do with that whatsoever.
Jason Lee 51:21
Oh, okay, I’ll make a note of that.
Samantha Riley 51:26
Jason, this has been such a fabulous conversation. What is one piece of advice that you would love to leave listeners with, whether it’s something to do or something to think about off the back of this conversation?
Jason Lee 51:41
Well, a lot like, I guess that’s a piece of advice, it would be like number one, I would hope we can continue this in another form, right of, if you want to reach back or get more of the different things that we do here, but really, having considered all of these different pieces, if you can just zero in on one thing that you can take an action on today, or do a deep think or journal or reflection on that you feel would really benefit your business. Like, as you’re listening to this, something probably stood out, and it was like, oh my goodness, like I hadn’t thought about it that way or and maybe you should think about that point a little bit deeper of how it could apply to your business. But that’s my recommendation. Like every time I listen to any podcast or go to a conference, I try to find one thing, one thing that just truly sparked an interest, because that’s like, kind of feeding back to what we’re talking about, joy, I feel like to our, our inner spirits, right? Like our, like, we have an inner genius that stuff will catch our attention to tell us, like, hey, let’s do that. Let’s do this. But if you don’t jot it down, or you don’t start working on that, the inspiration quickly leaves, and then you’re busy with your next appointment. Oh, I gotta pick up my kid from school. I go, let’s figure out dinner. And like, a few hours later, that inspiration is gone, right? So if you can find some way to pick out whatever you just took from this call and think about it now, or write it down so that you will think about it at some point in the next 24 hours, it’ll serve you greatly.
Samantha Riley 53:14
Such brilliant advice. Thanks so much, Jason, for joining us today. I so appreciate you.
Jason Lee 53:19
It was great to be here. Thanks. Sam.
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