BIRD WILLIAMS: You're listening to Bird Means Business Episode 29. 

Hi there, thank you so much for tuning into the Bird Means Business podcast. I'm glad you're here. So, today we are going to talk about "Simple and Strong". And that's actually a phrase that my husband, Terry, and I kind of decided to focus this year on, 2020. We came into this year. We were thinking let's just keep things simple and strong and wanted to simplify in whatever areas we could in our life. Well, little did we know that 2020 was about to be completely wild, in more ways than one. And so I'm very grateful that we came into this year with that mindset because I think it has us feeling more equipped. We've minimalized, and we're able to have more space for the craziness that this year has been. So that is the phrase that came to mind as I began to prepare for this week's episode. We're going to talk about how simple and strong applies in your business too. 

Now, before we jump in. Many of you have reached out wanting to talk strategy, and you know that's like my jam. I love talking strategy. So I added a link on my website so that you can go on and book and schedule a session directly. You can go to birdwilliams.com/workwithme. Now there's no structure for these strategy session calls, you're going to just come with your questions and we'll dive right in. I'm also going to send you a questionnaire ahead of time so that we can kind of get a sense of where you are. But the more prepared you come to the call, the more efficient the call will be. 

If you need a start, if you're like, "I don't even know where to start". I actually have a guide, it's called, "Ready, Set, launch", and it's the first 10 steps to launching your business. You can go to launch.birdwilliams.com to download your free copy, and we can start there. 

All right. So let's go ahead and jump into the episode. As you know, if you've listened for a while. It is my mission to equip entrepreneurs with the tools that they need to launch and grow your business. So, one of the most fun things I've done so far with Bird Williams was a live online course that I did back in January. So this course was all about learning how to develop a profitable business plan. And the majority of the group of students that I had were starting from scratch, so you may not know but one of my favorite things ever is connecting people. I mean in business, in relationships, which side note is sometimes a disaster when I try to play Cupid. My husband always warns me against it. But when it comes to business. I mean, there's just something that lights me up when I'm able to bring people together who could help one another. So of course I did that with those students in my course. Whenever I had a business connection that could help them, I would make the call happily, excitedly. Like, "Oh, you want to start a food truck? Let me connect you with someone who did, a business owner who's already been down that road." Y'all I'll just side note let you know that there are few better resources that you have when you're launching your business than someone who's literally gone before you and done it. And I mean we did this when we launched The League. We had a friend who graciously allowed us to learn from his CrossFit gym. It was very different because we weren't CrossFit, but we were able to kind of understand how things work. So if you know someone that's done it before you and you feel comfortable asking, which a lot of times it's not very comfortable. Then do that because they're going to be able to give you so much gold. 

I knew that I have friends that were veteran entrepreneurs who could help these students in my course so I was so happy to connect them. And there were two of these situations that really stuck out to me. And both were actually in the food and beverage industry, but I believe this message is transferable to any business. So, here we are. We're sitting down, I think somewhere over coffee. One was like at the actual business of this veteran entrepreneur. And on one side of the table is the baby entrepreneur who's just starting out at the very beginning of their process. And on the other side is this veteran business owner with so much priceless knowledge. And y'all we're asking all of the questions. How does this work in the industry? What would you have done differently? Or here's what I'm thinking, what are your thoughts? And when I tell you what happened was straight gold. I mean, I was even taking notes. I was like this is incredible. 

And this was the recurring theme that I heard in those conversations, simplify. Don't try to do all of the things right out of the gate. Figure out the numbers, and what can work, and then build from there. That doesn't mean don't dream big. It just means be smart about how you can actually make your dream business a reality. So for one example, in one of the meetings, this entrepreneur-to-be had a phase one goal and the phase two goal. This veteran entrepreneur said to skip phase one completely and go straight to phase two. She's like that's what I would have done differently because phase one would be so costly and time-consuming and not worth it. In a different conversation, the veteran entrepreneur looks at this, like, you know, new baby entrepreneur, and says verbatim, "Do you want to be cute, or do you want to make money?" I still love that phrase because his point was, how you're going about it, you know, trying to be cute and trying to do all the things, is capital intensive, and you're going to have an unprofitable business for a long time. What he didn't say is, you might not survive it. 

So I'm going to tell you three ways to be simple and strong as you're launching your business. All right, first number one, run the numbers. Y'all heard it.  The numbers don't lie, right? The money part is key. So before you start, you know busying yourself with all the things. Forecast what you think will be coming in, and what we'll be going out. Get an understanding of when you think you'll be profitable. Here's an example. Before we ever finalized like even the name of our gym back in 2013, you know, we've launched a gym called The League. Before we even had the name, before we start looking at buildings or any of that, we created a business plan. And inside of that business plan was a budget with projections. So had we done everything else and spent all this time, money and energy and all the other things, only to later find out that the money wasn't adding up, and this either wouldn't work or we'd have to really rethink how we were going to do this, we would have just wasted a lot of time. Now, this depends on your launch timeline. Some of you might be creating a business plan, while you're in the middle of a launch. You are going to have to kind of start talking to your money team like we've talked about and looking at buildings and that sort of thing. Depending on the business, obviously, if you have a tighter launch timeline. But ideally, you're not going to be so close to your timeline like that. And you're going to start your business plan early, kind of iron out all the wrinkles, and then be able to go forward and have these conversations with your money team and potential investors or employees or partners, and have all your questions answered.  So it does depend in terms of how you navigate that. But you don't want to move forward strongly without knowing if the numbers are going to even work in the first place. 

All right. That was number one. Number two, In order to be simple and strong, don't get caught up. So for example, don't start your business because your website is imperfect. And I know, I know. I've used that example a few times, but it's just so huge to me because I know business owners who are bringing in five-figure months, with no website at all. Maybe they just have a lead page. And so yes you want your website to be great and to be excellent. But consider the ROI, your return on investment. Make money first, and then you can pay someone later to make it better. You know because having a good website doesn't prove your business model works so start there. I promise you, a strong proven business model is so much more important than a fancy website. 

I built my website on Squarespace myself when I launched my business. Honestly, it was mostly fun and partly annoying because I am a perfectionist. But what I found myself kind of going crazy over, exactly where the picture needed to be positioned and the text font and how big. I just stopped, and I moved on. And the funny thing is a friend actually recently reached out to me and she was asking like who designed your website. She couldn't believe that it was me. I did it myself and I did it through Squarespace. I'm actually ironically in the process right now of improving my website, but I have the capital to do that now with money that I actually made from the business when I started my business with a website that didn't have all the bells and whistles. So my point is, start where you can, and grow from there. Don't wait for everything to be perfect because you might not ever actually start. And then what you learn, and what you build as you grow can then help you for your next level. 

All right, good that was number two. Number three is getting granular on your operations. This will allow you to keep things simple and strong. So you're going to ask questions like what helps me scale more quickly? What can I automate so that my business can grow without requiring more work from me at every turn? Can you create video tutorials for frequently asked questions or some kind of internal team training, so that every time you hire someone on, you're not having to go through the same process? It's streamlined. Or every time a client asks you questions you instead of having to draft a long email or get on the phone with them you can just send them a PDF or a video. Another example is, is there an all-in-one software that will manage multiple aspects of your operations instead of you having to use multiple systems that are just a little bit more complicated? For example, you can check out Episode 16 for how I use one system to automate client communication in my entire business. 

So those are just three tips, but my challenge for you, friend, is to identify what areas in your business can be simplified so that you can move forward in power. Take note of what you've learned today in this episode and put a plan into action this week. I know you can do it. I know that it's not the fun thing, this isn't the sexy exciting thing. But it's the things that it will allow you to move forward strong and create the profitable, scalable, successful business. 

All right. That's all for now. Thank you so much for being a part of the Bird Means Business podcast tribe. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts and also follow us on Spotify. And remember, share this episode with any of your entrepreneur friends, and let them know about Bird Means Business. All right. Talk to you next week.