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There comes a moment in business where you look around and think, “This cannot be it. There has to be a smarter way to grow.” You can feel the potential inside you, you can see the future you want, but you don’t know what to do differently. If you are standing in that place right now, this conversation will help you start to understand what your next move needs to be.
In this episode, Samantha and Leon are walking you through the exact shifts that will help you step out of busy work and into true business growth. You will discover how to step into your CEO role without being buried in the day to day.
WHAT YOU’LL DISCOVER IN THIS EPISODE:
- 00:53 – Why is dreaming bigger so important as a business owner?
- 03:08 – These are the signs that the people around you are limiting your vision
- 10:24 – The real difference between busy work and business growth
- 17:21 – What you should be doing instead of creating another post
- 27:29 – What a truly scalable offer looks like and why you need one
- 29:29 – Is your lead flow random? You need this.
- 36:35 – The systems and support that free you from building yourself a job.
- 40:58 – Why low-value tasks keep you stuck and how to break that cycle
Want alignment as you scale? Let’s chat.
RESOURCES:
TABLE OF CONTENTS
From Busy Work to Real Growth: How To Build a Business That Scales
Big Growth Requires Big Thinking
Your Environment Shapes Your Belief
Busy Work Feels Productive but Keeps You Small
Real Growth Starts With a Scalable Offer
You Cannot Scale Without Predictable Lead Flow
Systems and Support Are What Create Freedom
Success Comes From Stopping What No Longer Serves You
From Busy Work to Real Growth: How To Build a Business That Scales
There comes a point where you look at your calendar, your task list, your goals, and think, “There has to be a better way to grow.” You know you are capable of more, you can feel your next level calling, but your days are packed with activity that never quite turns into momentum. Growth feels slow. Freedom feels far away. And even though you are working hard, the needle barely moves.
If that feels familiar, this is the moment to shift from building a job into building a business that grows with you. This episode uncovers the mindset, strategy, and systems that help you break the cycle of busy work and step confidently into scalable growth.
Big Growth Requires Big Thinking
Before anything changes in your business, something has to shift in you first. Growth does not come from working harder. It comes from thinking bigger, acting like the future version of yourself, and letting go of the habits that keep you anchored to the present.
When you play small, you design a small business. When you stretch your vision, you naturally start behaving like the person who leads a bigger company. And that shift changes everything.
Your Environment Shapes Your Belief
One of the biggest reasons people stay stuck is because the people around them do not understand their vision. Family, friends, colleagues, even well-meaning partners often try to keep you safe by encouraging the safer option… not the bigger one. Their doubt becomes your doubt. Their fear becomes your ceiling.
If you want to grow, surround yourself with people who think big, act bold, and support your vision even when you have not achieved it yet. Sometimes you borrow belief until your own catches up.
Busy Work Feels Productive but Keeps You Small
If your days are full but your growth is slow, you are probably stuck in busy work.
Tweaking graphics. Rewriting your website. Re-recording content. Posting without a strategy. Redoing tasks that should be done once. These things feel productive, but they do not grow your revenue or your capacity. They keep you occupied instead of progressing.
Busy work is comforting. It feels safe. But it stops the business from moving forward.
Real Growth Starts With a Scalable Offer
Scaling begins with one core offer that delivers real results through a delivery model that multiplies your time.
This means shifting away from customised one to one work and into a clear, leveraged framework that creates consistent outcomes. When your offer is scalable, your delivery can grow without you burning out, and your clients get an even better experience.
The right offer is specific, desirable, and outcome driven. It must solve a problem your ideal clients are actively trying to fix now, not someday.
You Cannot Scale Without Predictable Lead Flow
Most coaches get stuck because they rely on random lead spikes instead of a consistent system. A scalable business needs a simple, repeatable way to bring new leads in every day or every week. Think of it like a conveyor belt. If the belt is turned off, nothing moves.
A predictable lead generation system reduces panic, removes guesswork, and gives you space to focus on serving clients at a higher level.
Systems and Support Are What Create Freedom
If everything in your business depends on you, your business cannot grow.
Systems reduce decision fatigue, keep your delivery consistent, and make sure nothing gets missed. Delegation removes tasks from your plate so you focus on the work that actually grows the business.
When you build systems, you build freedom. When you build support, you build capacity.
This is how you move from being the operator to becoming the CEO.
Success Comes From Stopping What No Longer Serves You
Growth is not only about what you start doing. It is equally about what you stop doing.
Low value tasks drain your time and cost you far more than they save. When you shift your energy to revenue-creating activities and CEO-level decisions, everything accelerates. Your income grows. Your capacity expands. Your freedom increases.
This is the moment where the business finally starts working for you.
CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA RILEY
CONNECT WITH LEON FLITTON
TRANSCRIPTION
Samantha Riley 00:00
Welcome to today’s episode of Business Growth Lab. I’m your co host, Samantha Riley, here, as always, with my husband and business partner, Leon Flint, and that sounded really boring. Husband and business partner doesn’t partner in crime. I’m still stuck on this. Doesn’t partner in crime sound much better.
Leon Flitton 00:17
Yeah, it does. What about copilot? No, I’m
Samantha Riley 00:21
Samantha Riley, and I’m here with my co pilot, Leon flitton. We are arriving into Sydney.
Leon Flitton 00:31
Is your captain speaking? Bing Bong,
Samantha Riley 00:40
oh, you will. You know that you will. Hey, Leon, let’s start off with something a little bit serious. What was the biggest lesson you learned last week?
Leon Flitton 00:53
I think I might have actually come up with myself, but the lesson I learned from what we were discussing was that you need to dream big. You You have to aim high and, and I think maybe, you know, in my past, I’ve been guilty of that, not aiming high enough or big enough, but I think dreaming big and, and being that person that’s going to be the, you know, not be the 10k month person, but it’s going to be the 100k month person that is, yeah, dream big, go hard.
Samantha Riley 01:24
So I’m really interested. It’s not just about and you and I have talked a lot because we’ve, we’ve got some really big stuff happening behind the scenes right now. But it’s not just a thinking thing. Is it? It’s not just the dreaming big. What is it that you think has actually shifted the needle for you in actually being that person? I don’t know how to ask her without almost giving it away,
Samantha Riley 01:52
and I think I kind of did then, right? Yeah, yeah. What was the shift for you to be playing the size of the game that we’re playing now, because you did dream big, or you are dreaming big, but I feel like something has shifted in you.
Leon Flitton 02:08
I think I was self limiting, if that makes sense, by not behaving and acting and doing the things that you know, the person I want to become, or the business I want to build is, and I think I was doing the things for, for now, or, or, you know, potentially a smaller business, and what I actually want to build, and I have plans to build, you know, quite a big business, that’s what I want to do. And I think that I was still acting like, you know, there was like, well, probably an employee rather than a business owner. It’s probably more the point.
Samantha Riley 02:46
So that’s actually a really good thing, because that is what we’re talking about today, which we’ll get into in a minute. But yeah, let’s face it, there’s few people that reached out. They like it, that thinking bit is big is sexy.
Leon Flitton 03:06
Dear. That’s a good thing, right?
Samantha Riley 03:08
I think so. I think it’s fantastic. I mean, I’ve always been a big thinker, and I’ve often found that other people struggle with it more than me, funnily enough, like when I’m like that, well, this is where I want to go. I’ve had to struggle more with people going, really, you really want to do that? You really want to go there. Do you really think that’s possible? So it’s funny how people can struggle with it in different ways. Because I know I’ve had so, oh my goodness, more people than I can count. Actually, I could. It’s probably easier to say I could probably count on one hand the amount of people that have gone. I actually believe that you’re going to do that, and I see where you’re going, and I see why you’re thinking that, and that’s really cool. Yeah.
Leon Flitton 03:55
Do you think that people talk themselves out of stuff by going, Oh, that’s too big. Oh, no, we can’t do that.
Samantha Riley 04:00
Yeah, totally, because it helps make them feel safe. Because when you do want to go somewhere big, the people that are around you generally, you know, and I’m talking family, or maybe it might be friends that aren’t in your mastermind. It might be like friends that are, you know, in jobs, they want to keep you safe so they will downplay everything. I was just chatting to someone a little while ago, and that person was saying that his partner, who’s in a corporate job, was sort of saying to him, Are you sure you can do this? Are you sure that maybe you shouldn’t? You know, go get a really good job because their partner couldn’t see the vision, and their partner, because they were in a job, couldn’t understand how it works, and for them, they were trying to keep that person safe like it’s done out of love. It’s also done out of safety for themselves, but it’s really hard to show up as a big thinking business. Business person when you have those limiting beliefs constantly being peppered at you,
Leon Flitton 05:05
yeah, that’s like feeding negative thoughts in, isn’t it?
Samantha Riley 05:09
Yeah? Like when I think about, you know, the times that I’ve done really big things, it’s always been when I’ve had someone there in my corner going, Yeah, you’ve got this or helping me work through a problem or a challenge or how to get to the next step, it’s almost like I’m borrowing belief from the other person, because they believe in me almost more than I do, because until we’ve actually reached those goals, we haven’t actually achieved them, so we don’t have that belief built in yet. So I think that you know, just from what you’re saying, having the right person that you can borrow the belief from is so important.
Leon Flitton 05:52
Yeah, yeah. I think that’s where probably a good coach comes in. I think saying that, what did you What was your biggest takeaway?
Samantha Riley 06:02
Well, it’s funny that we actually went there because I didn’t know that that’s where we were going to actually go. I’ll say the biggest lesson, but it’s not the biggest lesson I’ve ever had for this, because it’s something I’ve always done, but it was just a reminder that if you do want to go and do something big, you are going to have to do something differently, and if it’s something that you don’t know how to do, go find the best person to help you. And you know, we’ve been spending our Saturdays where most people wouldn’t do that, you know, it’s like I’ve got a boundary around my weekends. We’ve been doing Saturdays going through a mentorship to learn something in our business that we want to get really, really good at. So I guess it’s just that almost sort of piggy backing off what you said, but in a different way, like, if you have big plan and you want to go somewhere, then absolutely do everything you can to make it happen, and don’t take on the old beliefs of, oh, I would never work on a weekend because that’s my private time. It’s like, No, I’ve got a really big goal right now, and I need to do some things that I don’t normally do. So yeah, there you go. That’s, that’s what we’re doing now, spending our weekends trying to master something that wasn’t easy for us, but is already getting easier because we’re just putting we’re really leaning in and putting in the work.
Leon Flitton 07:24
Yeah, yeah. So you said, you know about being uncomfortable and comfort, there’s two things there. So yeah, to grow, chances are you’re gonna be uncomfortable. It’s going to happen.
Samantha Riley 07:34
Yep, 100% not a might.
Leon Flitton 07:39
It will be Yeah. And the other thing is that was you have to do what others won’t so you can get what they haven’t got, so to speak. Yeah, you know, you
Samantha Riley 07:49
said it better than I did. Well done. I’m
Leon Flitton 07:54
so used to mincing everything. I do think that that is stepping outside of comfort zone, isn’t you’re going to have to. And I said Kenny, yeah, all these corny sayings, like, you know, be comfortable with being uncomfortable, and the fact that you’ll do what others won’t do, you know, like, if you’re going to go and do put the extra yards in to get what you need to take you where you want to go and, and I think that’s what sets a lot of people apart.
Samantha Riley 08:21
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like, we know quite a few coaches that are in the 1% of coaches. We’re not, but I know that we’re right up well into the, like, top 5% of coaches in the world, which is pretty cool. And you know what? Every single one of them have those same behaviors. Yeah, and I want to be super clear, it’s not I’m going to work every weekend forever and ever and ever, because that’s just the fastest rate to burn out. But it’s doing what needs to be done right now, because there’s an opportunity in front of us and doing whatever it takes within reason to be able to get there. Actually, I was going to say we weighed it up. We didn’t. We went, Oh, it’s on a Saturday. Okay, let’s do that. We didn’t weigh it up. Did we because we were, we are, because we had a plan and we knew exactly what we needed to hit that plan. So then it was just, you know, reverse engineer, what do we need to do? What’s coming? What’s about to come out
Leon Flitton 09:25
classic as a classic Samantha line. It’s, are we doing this or not?
Samantha Riley 09:31
Can I share a story about the first time I said that to you? Sure? No, I won’t. I won’t. I won’t. But yes, it is a classic Samantha line. Are we doing this or not? It’s like, I’m not a dip my toe in the water kind of gal, am I? It’s like we’re all in or all out, and it’s because every time I dip my toe in, it never works. Like I’ve learned that I’ve had the feedback. Hit your toe in. It never works. So that’s why I’m like, All right, we’re going all in. Are we doing this? Or what exactly? Oh, dear. But it did used to scare you a little bit when I, when I came out with that one, so I’m glad that it doesn’t scare you anymore.
Leon Flitton 10:16
Or, you know, Oh, wow. Comfortable.
Samantha Riley 10:24
Let’s move on. Yeah, absolutely. Let’s move on. So today and going off that, we’re going to segue Are you building a job or are you building a scalable business? Because every single person that we meet, Leon in our business, one of the first things they say to us is, I’m so busy. And we hear this from everyone, no matter whether they’re making zero money in their business and if yet to sign their first client, or whether they’re doing $100,000 a month, they all say the same thing, so busy, but busy work might make you feel like you’re moving along. They might make you feel productive, but it is just busy work if it’s not increasing your revenue, if it’s not increasing your capacity to serve more people, and you don’t have a predictability of leads and sales, if you don’t have those three things happening, then you’re doing things 100% guaranteed. I can promise you this, you’re doing some things in your business right now that are keeping you busy and not moving the needle.
Leon Flitton 11:34
And I think a lot of people might not even realize they’re doing this as well, like subconsciously sabotaging themselves.
Samantha Riley 11:43
Actually, I don’t even know that. It’s self consciously sabotaging. It’s just if you, if you don’t know, then how do you know any different? It’s like when I went to my maths class and my teacher said, Cool, today, we’re doing trigonometry like I wasn’t sabotaging when I had no idea what trigonometry was, I hadn’t been shown what it was, right? And as soon as I was shown what it was, I found it really easy. Trigonometry is so easy for me. I like so easy. But I had to be shown what it was, but I wasn’t self sabotaging that I couldn’t do. I just didn’t know. So it’s a little bit funny that sometimes we can say, Oh, you might be self sabotaging when it’s just, if you knew the rules, and I’m putting rules in air quotes, if you knew the rules to building a scalable business, then you wouldn’t bother doing the busy stuff anymore, right?
Leon Flitton 12:37
Yeah, yeah. Well, we just talked about, you know, dreaming big and acting in the way that you want to be, that, you know, the going from the, you know, the 10k to 10 exit to the 100k a month person, what do you need to be or do and think to actually, you know, make that step. And I feel like some of the things that we’re going to talk about in a minute that to recognize what, you know, what you’re actually doing that could be causing you to be actually building up a job, yeah, that you need to be stepping into that, like that CEO, you know, role in the CEO modeling. So I think it’s just important, like, to recognize where you need to go where and where you’re at, you know, really analyze, analyze that so. But I know, Sam, you’ve got a heap of things that really explain what it might look like, and I think it’s be great to go through these, because this could really start make you think about what you’re doing. And I think it was like the the net effect of doing the wrong things, yeah, to what you should be doing. Totally.
Samantha Riley 13:45
We were talking about doing the things that are going to, you know, increase your revenue, help you to be able to serve more clients. So let’s talk about some of the things that are preventing you from doing that they might feel like work. You’re probably finishing the day going, oh my god, I was so busy. I got all this stuff done. But if you’re doing some of these things, I want you to mentally sort of tick off which of these you did last week, because I can guarantee you that you could probably let these go, things like tweaking Canva graphics and playing with fonts and colors and choosing the exact right stock image for your social media thing. If you’re in Canva every day, stop it. What’s that YouTube video?
Samantha Riley 14:34
You know I’m talking about, aren’t you? Because it reminded me of that when he says, Stop it. I’m gonna have to look if you’re a coach and you want to see the funniest coaching skit you’ve ever seen, I’ll make sure that we link it up in the show notes below. It’s very, very and you’ll never hear every time you hear, stop it, you’ll just crack up laughing.
Leon Flitton 14:52
And I didn’t we stuck
Samantha Riley 14:54
tweaking Canva graphics, you know, rewriting your website again. Again and again and again and again, re recording the same training that you’ve recorded four times before, creating new lead magnets, instead of actually optimizing the one that you’ve got posting all day on social media, without actually having a strategy, just so you can stay visible. Like, yes, you do need to stay visible, but if there’s no strategy, it’s not going to work. So, you know that’s filming reels or tick tocks with, you know, no clear call to action, or no funnel, or no idea why you’re actually posting them. It’s just busy, busy work.
Leon Flitton 15:42
Yeah, it’s like, that’s like, the done is, well, he probably, but the Done is better than perfect. I think I’m not saying put out rubbish work, don’t get me wrong. But I think there, we don’t do that world class. People always world class. But the actual, you know, the RE tweaking and re tweaking and re tweaking going for perfection is just going to kill momentum. That’s all totally and totally the other part of it is, and it’s something that, that I know you’re big on as well, is the data. If you don’t put stuff out and try it, how do you know if it works or not? You can retweet it, retweet it, then put it out and then doesn’t go anywhere anyway, and that was a complete waste of time, but you could have actually had it almost perfect, put it out and see if it works or not.
Samantha Riley 16:28
Yeah, yeah. 100% I say. Don’t change anything without the data. Again, that’s just busy work, like get whatever it is out there. So one of the things I just mentioned was a lead magnet. Create your lead magnet, put it out. Do people want it? If not, it’s not the lead magnet. It’s probably the messaging, or, you know, the name of it, or how you’re presenting it. Change that. Don’t change the lead magnet. Like just, you know, unless you really need to Yeah.
Leon Flitton 17:01
One of the other things I know that I hear you say a lot as well, and you’re very big on and something I really love about what you do, is the strategy component of things.
Samantha Riley 17:11
I say that word like 50 times a day, don’t I? Yeah. Strategy, that’s another sexy to me, baby.
Leon Flitton 17:21
Strategy, so, but if I think about like social media, for example, and if you’re just posting willy nilly without any strategy behind any of it, and you know it’s there’s like, you don’t follow a direct plan that we created from a strategy. How do you know if you go in the right direction? How do you know if it’s working or not? You know if so, if you’ve got no strategy and you’ve got no plan and you’ve got no data coming out, who knows what’s going on with it, but, but chances are just Yeah, postings not going to really get you anywhere.
Samantha Riley 17:57
So totally Yeah, you need to know. And you’re right. I’m massive on strategy, because I have got no time to waste. Actually, one of my mentors from back in my personal training days, Paul check, says, don’t guess, assess, and it’s 100% right, if you just don’t guess. And we just onboarded a new podcast client with our podcast agency, and I think she was a little surprised when the first questions I asked her is, what’s your business? What’s your offer? Who’s your ideal client? She’s like, Oh, I thought we were talking about podcasting, yeah. And if we want a podcast that brings our clients through our funnel, you need to know all of that so we can clearly create the strategy moving forward. So, yeah, I’m a big believer in creative strategy so that we can reverse engineer. And I think too many people try and create a strategy moving forward instead of moving backwards, which means they end up, like, miles off course.
Leon Flitton 18:59
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And by the way, I’m looking forward to forward to her podcast, because she does some really good work as well.
Samantha Riley 19:05
So yeah, it’s gonna be really cool. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You know, there’s something else in busy work. And I see this a real lot, and it’s almost busy work that’s an avoidance tactic, and that’s binging courses or trainings or free downloads instead of implementing what they actually know. Yeah? You know, I’m a big believer in we learn just in time, not just in case, because we should be learning something, putting it into practice. Because, guess what, when we’re learning, things won’t ever go as easily as what they’re meant to because we’re learning, it’s like we’re learning to walk. We’re going to fall down. And the best way to learn is to actually make the mistakes and have the context go, oh, that didn’t work because of this. Is, and when we have context, it’s so much easier to learn something. Goes back to the trick. No idea why I learned it. I
Leon Flitton 20:11
was just going to say as well, you get really good point there about the just just in time, not just in case, and in most businesses, even the corporate ones I’ve been in, that just in case, was always mostly a complete waste of time. So what I was thinking was that we talked about last week the cognitive bathtub. You only have so much space in the cognitive load during each day. If you start going and adding extra learning tasks in extra, this in extra, whatever it is tasks, you actually overload yourself, and then everything starts escaping overflow in the edge of the bathtub, and it’s gone. And you really got to be careful as a CEO that you’re only taking on what you can handle, because you have a really important role. So by, you know, doing things like, you know, obsessing over checking likes and weird stuff like that as well, or saying yes to things like, you know, podcasts or summits that you really they’re not really aligned with your stuff like that, doing other things, yeah, exactly, yeah. Adding that stuff in, you’re just overloading yourself. So, you know, and like you said before, even, like, you know, trying to make a what’s make up, like, 1020 new lead magnets, instead of using the ones they already have, that kind of thing. So overloads, and I think you really careful with it, because I think that’s a good way to get a burnout,
Samantha Riley 21:31
overloading yourself. I like what you said then about, you know, maybe going on summits or podcasts or whatever it is, where your ideal clients are, and I think that’s something for people that you know. I think when you’re going from zero to 10k a month, there’s that there is that hustle. It’s like you do. I think, I really do believe you kind of need to say yes to a lot of things, so that you start to feel what’s in alignment and what isn’t. But to get past there, you have to start saying no to the things that you know aren’t in line in alignment anymore. So you know, sure to get started say yes to everything, but to get to that next level, you have to start saying no no to the things that absolutely aren’t in alignment. And that’s one of the one of a cool little or one of the little tweaks, I guess that need to be made.
Leon Flitton 22:25
Yeah, I keep thinking about the decision fatigue as well, and how jobs wore the same black skivvy. Was it black?
Samantha Riley 22:33
What it was? Oh, yeah, I’m not really sure. I think, like, doesn’t sucks wear, like a great a gray t shirt every day.
Leon Flitton 22:40
Same thing, yeah, yeah. They both them, did it? Yeah. They both did.
Samantha Riley 22:44
Because Riley chick, she wears, it’s the same black she does exactly the same reason
Samantha Riley 22:53
I move it time to think, what top should I be putting on? I just put the same
Leon Flitton 23:02
- So he’s a thing, right, right?
Samantha Riley 23:06
It is a thing. Yeah, let’s talk about some of the operations and admin busy work, because admin is living all day in your emails, in your inbox. Slack. Voxer, whatever it is, I think that there should be certain times that you check and then in between, just like, shut the tabs, fiddling with tech tools, instead of, like, keeping things simple, like, oh, there’s this new tech tool. We saw it a lot with Black Friday over the weekend. So many people saying, Hey, have a look at these tech tools. And it’s like, hang on a minute. Should we not be asking, I’ve got this gap, or I’ve got this, this process in my business that isn’t working. What’s the exact tool that should be fitting that not? Oh, wow, that. That tool looks good. I should grab that and use that. And then all of a sudden, you’ve got a tech stack of 59 in what could have been done in three apps? Yeah, tech stacks. I’m a big believer in tech, in getting the right tech stack, because it does cut down on time. However, I don’t have huge tech stacks, and I want as little or as little, yeah, as little tools as possible, because it means there’s less to break. Yeah?
Leon Flitton 24:19
So I was going to say that the more stuff you plug together, the more chances kind of breaking, because everything gets updated or superseded, or whatever it is, and then it breaks at some stage, and all sudden, then you’re losing or you’re losing leads or something like that, you know, something crazy. So keep it as simple as possible and up to date. But I think there’s also you need to make sure you’re just buying the right tool for the right job, and that’s all you need. You don’t need to get fancy, absolutely
Samantha Riley 24:47
tech tools. They cost lots of money.
Leon Flitton 24:50
Yep, yep, yep, subscriptions add up. So, yeah, yeah. There’s always an upgrade. It’s always an upgrade.
Samantha Riley 24:56
Someone always, always, let’s. Move I think, you know, we’ve got the idea it’s lots of researching and mucking around in tabs that have got little red notifications on them, things that really don’t move the needle. Let’s talk about and this goes a little bit piggybacking off the last two weeks that we’ve been talking about the the top three things that you need to do to scale. And I will stand on this hill forever with these three, because without making sure that you’ve got these right, you always going to be busy always, always, always. And number one is to lock in a scalable offer and a delivery model. So I’m talking about one core offer, that everyone knows what you do in a way, that you’re working leveraged hours, and that means that you’re moving away from one on one. You’re working away from like custom projects, where you’re working with people one on one, and everything’s different. You know, you’ve got one clear offer with one framework, one type of person that you work with, and that offer needs to be very specific. The promise needs to be specific, and it needs to be desirable and outcome driven. If people don’t feel like they want it, like, if it’s not super compelling, then they it doesn’t matter how good it sounds. They’ll probably say something like, oh yeah, I’ll get to that one day. They have to understand why they need to sign up to it now. And most of that in the B to B space is, am I going to make more money, or am I going to get my time back? And essentially, that’s what the promise needs to be driven around.
Leon Flitton 26:50
Yeah, yeah. And look, if you want to hear more about that, you can listen to the previous episode as well. One thing I was going to say about moving from one to one to group is that one to one to group isn’t like a downgrade of your quality, of your output, either, and and I think one of the things that’s a benefit that you don’t get with one on one is you don’t get the community and the mastermind like you don’t get the combined mindset of everyone as well. Because, I think together, you know, the ideas even even on group calls. You know, when someone asks a question, you go, Oh, you know what? I was thinking that as well, but I just didn’t ask it, so yeah,
Samantha Riley 27:29
or I didn’t even know that was a question. Absolutely, it’s leverage for you as the coach or the consultant, but I honestly believe that it’s more valuable for the participants, because they’ve got those people asking questions. But here’s something else that a lot of people don’t think about as a one on one coach. You don’t necessarily need a framework, because how it works is you have a client that comes to a call, they tell you their problems, and you work through them. You can’t do that when you’re in a group situation all the time. You need to have some sort of framework that you walk people through, because you’re coaching a lot of people at once. So in actual fact, it makes your coaching better, because you actually have to work out what, what does this framework look like? What are the steps that I need to put in place? What’s the order that I have to coach people through? What is that success path that I need to take people on? What are the trainings or the templates or the checklists or the, you know, whatever it is that I need to be able to provide so that my clients get that result? So I honestly think that as a coach, you have to double down on your IP when you’re coaching in a group where you don’t necessarily need to in a one on one situation.
Leon Flitton 28:48
Yeah, I was just thinking then that the other thing it does is it helps you identify gaps that the client may have far quicker as well, because if you can see, you see a gap in it.
Samantha Riley 29:02
So one of the things that you can ask yourself to know if you’re in this situation is, if you doubled your clients tomorrow, would you be able to deliver? Would you be able to take those clients on? Or would your delivery or your offer buckle? Would you not be able to take those clients on? And if the answer is no, I couldn’t take them on, then that’s something that you need to look at. Otherwise you can’t grow your your offer. So that’s the first thing, Leon, alright, let’s talk about the second thing that you absolutely must have in your business, and that is having a lead generation system. Because I think too many people are saying, I need more leads, but don’t have a system to have them on repeat, and it’s just such a stressful place to be when you don’t have leads coming into your business, right?
Leon Flitton 29:52
Yeah, yeah. I think people forget too that you have to be a marketer as well as a coach. You can’t just be just a coach. Mm. Hmm, you still have to be able to acquire leads, generate leads, like if you just sitting around waiting for them to come to you, they probably won’t.
Samantha Riley 30:08
Yeah, no, they won’t. You need us, even if they do. Now, if you don’t have a lead generation system, what will happen is, imagine you’ve got all your leads in a bucket. I mean, that leads could be your social media audience or your email list. If you’re not adding to that bucket, at some point, your audience will be like, Yep, I’ve heard that. I’ve heard that. I’ve heard that. And you’re going to you’re going to run out of leads. You need to be consistently feeling the bucket. You need a simple, repeatable way so that people can find you, so that you can warm them up, and so that people can book in or inquire whether it’s a, you know, they’re booking in for a sales call, or whether they’re getting some sort of sales document from you, whatever it is. It’s really important that you have a system. So almost think about it like a conveyor belt, you know, with little leads on it, and it’s just consistently working all the time, and I find that most coaches have their conveyor belt turned off, and then they wonder why they don’t have any leads, or why they don’t have any sales calls booked in. Like, if you don’t have a system, it’s like your conveyor belt is off and the only person that you know, that can switch that back on, is you?
Leon Flitton 31:22
Yeah, yeah. I think it’s as well, you know, like, it’s got to be, like, right, almost running 24/7, like it has to be moving all the time. Like it just needs consistently moving. And quick story here we have a, like, a our property, and it’s got a dam on it, but the dam has a little overflow pipe, and overflow pipe feeds into this bathtub with horses, right? So it seems like it’s running hardly any water out of it, but always runs. It runs non stop. And this little hose, if you, if you overflow the bathtub, the horses don’t start drinking it. The amazing amount of water comes out on the ground. Hey, like over 24 hours. It’s astounding, but it’s because it’s running 24/7, it’s like a trickle, but it just keeps going. If you keep having that lead flow all the time, you know that you’re going to have like enough leads to grow your business and scale your business. You just keep going consistent, consistent.
Samantha Riley 32:17
The voices keep drinking. That’s it. That’s a nice metaphor.
Leon Flitton 32:22
I mean, there’s a whole, you know, taking the horse to water and feed MSG and that kind of stuff. But, you know,
Samantha Riley 32:29
yeah, you can make your horse thirsty and they will drink, but it still, still requires a little bit more effort, like, just have a trickle. That’s why I’m such a big believer in paid ads. And so many people say, Oh, paid ads don’t work. Oh, poppycock. Do work. You know, when I went to Business College, the I’m showing my age here, I’d actually hardly used a computer. When I went to business college, like I learned shorthand. I learned how to type on an, you know, on a on a typewriter. We didn’t even, we did have computers at school, but we certainly everyone didn’t have one, and I didn’t do computing. So when I went to business college, you know, went into my first computing lesson with my big, huge floppy disk, you know, the really, really big ones, yeah, I remember those like a piece of micro fish tape, yeah, one of those that fit hardly any data on it. And the very, very first thing that we were taught, like number one piece of information on day one, and I’ve never forgotten it, is, if it doesn’t work, it’s not the computer, it’s the operator, never the computer, it’s always the operator. It means that there is something wrong with the input, because the computer can’t get it wrong. And I that, I think that’s the thing with ads as well, that if you’re saying paid ads don’t work, it’s because you don’t know how to run them, or you don’t know how to read the data, or you don’t know how to fix it, or whatever it is, they’re not working. It’s user error.
Leon Flitton 34:00
Yeah, yeah. Oh, quick, funny story one of my mates. Mick, if you’re out there. Mick, he had a funny story. So he was this podcast, hey, probably not, probably not his thing, hey, but he had this thing called pep cat because, because he used to work in it, it was problem between keyboard and chair user febcac, Pep cat.
Samantha Riley 34:25
There you go. So if your Facebook ads aren’t working, it’s pep cat.
Leon Flitton 34:33
That’s actually number three, shouldn’t we?
Samantha Riley 34:36
Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. So yes, you need a lead generation system. I think we should definitely go into that in another episode, in depth of what that actually looks like. But number three, you need to have this in your business if you want to scale and that’s systems and the support so that your business isn’t all on you. So I talked about some of the admin. Things that we’re doing you know, constantly in emails, or constantly manually sending things to people you know, manually onboarding clients, oh, manually having to take payments, send invoices. All these things can either be a system that’s automated, or you can automate the delegation. So it doesn’t always need to be a piece of tech. That’s the system. Maybe the system is that there’s someone on your team that has taken that off your plate, but it’s still a system. So it doesn’t always mean automation, but yeah, systems and support so that things don’t trap you in the busyness, so that you can do what it is that’s in your genius, which is, I can guarantee you know, being the one that’s got the IP, the one that’s delivering the insights, and the one that’s documenting them, that’s really as a coach, the two things that we should be doing,
Leon Flitton 35:55
yeah, yeah. Well, as a CEO of your business, you should be doing the thinking anyway, not so much of the of the doing of the admin. But what I was going to say as well was that if you’re taking all that stuff on and doing it manually, and it’s not automated or delegated as much as possible, I guarantee it will break. You will miss stuff, forget stuff. Soon as you get too busy, try to put on another client, and then you start missing things. It guaranteed will happen.
Samantha Riley 36:21
So absolutely. Because the other thing is, there’s the CEO. We’re in this position usually because we’re the big the big vision thinkers, right? You know, the big thinkers, and being in the in the weeds of doing little, tiny admin tasks, they’re boring and they’re not in our zone of genius. Otherwise they’d probably be in a different job, which means that we will miss things right? And one of the things that we do in our business, and one of the things that we work with our clients, is we have a win the week system, which is a system that gets done first thing Monday morning on these are the the needle movers that are going to help us win the week. And then what I do is I grab my win the week project, so I’ve got needle movers every single day, and I actually hand them straight to the team and say, These are the projects that we’ve got this week. You guys start on them, and if you need me, come back to me. So they might be things like setting up a workshop. And they’ll come back and say, Hey, Sam, what’s the workshop called? Or What date is it? What time is it? They hardly have to ask anything. Or have you got the copy for the page? Or, you know, who’s the ideal client, if they’ve got a system for generating that copy, they’re not waiting for me to go, Hey team, I’m going to run a workshop. I want you to go in and set up zoom and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, no, I’ve handed them the projects on Monday in bullet points. Every day has three bullet points, and I just give them that document, and they get as far as they can without me. And it’s amazing how many projects we can get moving with very, little to do with me. And I say, yeah, that’s why
Leon Flitton 38:09
someone’s going to be the overruling commander of this ship so
Samantha Riley 38:16
but well, what they do is to train you a little bit on this coming from corporate. You, you, well, you’ve been trained right over 30 plus years that this, that you have to do the thing. So it’s taken a little while for me to go, don’t do that thing.
Leon Flitton 38:35
But what the team does do, yeah, I do do that. But what the team does do, well is that they because you love systems so much, they actually go through the checklist and they do everything they could possibly do. So when they come back to you, going, we can’t do this, whatever tick box is, but they’ve done the rest of what they can do. So they need to move as much ahead as they can do the pieces they can and then come to Sam with the least amount of questions, so to speak. It’s not like they do like one thing, then come to you, then get back and forwards, back and forth, back and forwards. They need to do as much as they possibly can, and then come back to you, and then they finish it off. And that’s done
Samantha Riley 39:14
totally, totally on top of that. If there’s something that we’re doing and they’re not sure of what that system is, we’ll jump on a co working session, and we’ll work through the system, and we’ll document the system, because I know that it’s like sharpening the AX, right? There’s no point doing a job with a blunt ax. You’ll be there forever and it won’t get finished. So we want to, you know, get the system down, even if I’ve got to stop what I’m doing to get the system down, I know that that’s worth my time, because I won’t have to do it again. So systems are so important. They help give you predictable experience for your audience, for your clients, helps you with predictable revenue, and it. Gives you space, so that you can lead, so that you can create, so that you can do what it is that you want to do in your business, but also give you some life. If you want to go to the pub on Friday afternoons, you do that like you don’t have to work all the time in the morning, at 10 o’clock, it’s fine. You can do that.
Leon Flitton 40:21
So, yeah, well, look, you know, we said before, but you are the business owner. You weren’t the person that with the job. You’re the business owner. So I think that’s something that that you’ve really got to keep in mind. You’ve told me this before as well, and you’ve said it about the task, going, you know, you look at an admin task and going, is that, is that a $25 an hour task, or is that on the coach 500 an hour task, or whatever it is, you know, I think that’s something that that you really think about when you’re looking at, you know, who’s doing what, really,
Samantha Riley 40:57
absolutely so if you added up all your busy work, and it’s all $25 an hour tasks or $5 an hour tasks. And you know that your needle movers are all $500 an hour tasks like add up how much revenue you’re actually losing by doing all of those busy tasks. So let’s wrap this up. Leon, so most coaches think they have a business problem, like, I need more leads, I need to grow my business. But what they actually have is a busy work problem. They’re working really hard. Their days are full, their to do lists are ridiculously long, but their income or their revenue isn’t increasing, and their freedom isn’t expanding. So if that’s you, if you’ve listened to this episode and gone, yeah, that’s me, my revenue isn’t increasing and my freedom isn’t expanding, we’d love to help you to see the difference between building a business and building busy work. So if that’s you, just head over to Instagram. Our Instagram handles are below. DM us the word scale. That’s all you have to do. You don’t have to remember anything, just DM the world scale. And we will reach out to connect and let us help you map your next three scale moves so that you can build your revenue and increase your freedom in the next quarter. Because for every quarter you leave this you’re going to continue being busy, and your revenue is going to continue staying under a ceiling. Thanks so much for listening to this episode. We look forward to seeing you next week on another episode of business growth lab Ciao. You.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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