BIRD WILLIAMS: You're listening to Bird Means Business Episode 41. 

Hey, party people and welcome to the Bird Means Business podcast. I'm so glad that you're here. Thank you for taking time out of your day to join me here. This one is gonna be fun. We're talking about my total immersion weekend and how that can help you in your business as well. So, if you've been hanging around for a while, you might remember that earlier this year before all the craziness broke out. I had a total immersion weekend and I cannot tell you how glad I am that I did that when I did, and I'll get to more of that in a little bit. But, yes, I'm excited to share my insights, because it came at such a crucial point in my baby business. And y'all, it brought so much clarity. So I'm going to share why I did a total immersion weekend, how I structured it, and then how it impacted my business. I'm also going to give you the steps to take for your own total immersion weekend. All right. 

Before we get started I just want to say, if you need any help in your business, if you're like, “I am taking in all this information. This is great. I am just really stuck with something.” You can book a  consultation call with me, it's where we just sit down for 15 minutes, I kind of try to assess where you are in your business and how I could best serve you and go from there. If you want to go even further, I have a strategy session, it's a one-hour session that has a 30-minute follow-up call attached to it. So if you want to really dive into a specific area of your business you can go to birdwilliamsconsulting.com/strategy to get more information. 

Okay, so I heard about the total Immersion weekend idea and concept from Amy Porterfield. She is like the online course queen. Love her. I've taken in a ton of her content and one of her episodes was on a total immersion weekend. And here's what it is. So it is not like a relaxation weekend or you know a team retreat or even like a week to brainstorm and get creative. All of those are really important and great, and of course, you want to make space in your business for that too. I've not done that yet. Probably need that too. But a total immersion weekend is where you really dive deep and kind of attack, the messy areas of your business. And you really focus most on what is impacting your bottom line. So your numbers, right? Now that being said, I needed dedicated time and I'm going to explain a little bit about why. But I needed a whole weekend where I got away to do this. You might be able to find time in your day, in your life where you can have this time of focus around messy areas in your business. But your girl? I have two little boys at home, my family, I have a whole other gym business. I have a lot going on, so there was no way in the business of my every day that I was going to be able to dedicate the kind of time I needed to do something like this. So, this is why I basically took a staycation and went to a resort here in Houston and I checked out and got really in the nitty-gritty of my business. 

Okay, so like I said, the idea came from an Amy Porterfield episode, and it immediately resonated with me, and this was only two months into my business. I had launched on November 11, 2019. It was around the end of January that I actually booked it. And when I heard it, this episode about this idea of a total immersion weekend, I thought, I have to do something like this because so much is changing so quickly in my business. Let me kind of paint the picture. So, I had actually just launched my online course, about how to develop a profitable business plan. And I was in the middle of week one with my students, and it was an incredible process. I really enjoyed it. I know my students got a lot from it. And I was in the middle of this week and I said you know what? Before I go any further I need to make sure that I go ahead and book it. So that's step number one. Book your total immersion weekend. You might hear this episode and say, you know what? I need to do that. Don't wait too long to actually book it. 

So I booked it for about a month out. It was the end of January when I booked. I booked for the end of February. So when you do this you're obviously going to want to look at your calendar. If you have a partner or a spouse, you're going to want to talk with them about what weekend is best. If you have kids you’re gonna want to get a babysitter. You want to book the hotel. You want to go all out and make it happen.

So y'all, we're in the middle of quarantine. So it's understandable that you might be listening to this and think, I don't know if I feel comfortable going to a hotel right now. 100% get that. I did this before we knew COVID was even a thing. If you do this at home, you can still be super intentional. You can get a babysitter or have the kids be at their grandparents’ house for the weekend, or with a friend and have an extended playdate kind of thing for the weekend. You can be intentional with your spouse and say I love you so much, but this time is reserved for me focusing on my business. But I want you to book it. That's step number one. 

Then, once you do this, I'm telling you you're going to get excited and you're going to start having all the ideas. What I want you to do is take all that energy and focus it on writing down your top three pain points in your business that you're going to focus on during this time, during your total immersion weekend. So, this might be something that just consistently creates an issue in your workflow. For example, something that slows down your process and just makes it really irritating. Or it might just be an area in your business where you're hitting a ceiling, and you're really trying to figure out how to increase capacity. It might be an area in your business where the numbers are not adding up and you really need to address this because you're just draining money in this area of your business. Another thing, it could just be to understand the techniques in your business or those things that you really want to explore and research, but you just don't have a time in your day to devote to it in a regular workweek. So something that you might really want to go in on during your total immersion weekend. 

Now, what's going to happen after you start to identify these things over time as it's leading up to your total immersion weekend, you are going to have so many thoughts pop in your head. I want you to capture all of those, and I want you to help it structure your agenda for what you're going to do that week, which we'll get to in a second. I'll just give you an example of my three main pain points that I focused on during my total immersion weekend. Again, when I heard that episode I could already kind of see, I felt I know exactly what it is in my business that I need to focus on. It's pretty clear what these things are and this is what they were for me. 

Number one, content organization and process. And that's because you know I had a brick-and-mortar service based business and gym here in Houston, Texas called The League, before launching Bird Williams. So I never had to create so much content for an online service based business, which is what I was doing with the consulting firm, and so I was super-duper random. everything was all over the place and I had to create a process on how to capture my ideas. Where did everything go? How did I store it? How did I do my content management system? And so on and so forth. I actually talked about this in Episode 21 which is called “My Content Process”. And so, again, one of the pain points in my business is that there was just no organization when it came to content and I needed to figure out how to not have piled up to-do list items associated with it and all of that. So that was something I knew I needed to do. Again it was something that I kept saying I would do. But then stuff kept getting in the way. I'd have a block on my calendar for it and then something so much more important would show up, and I’d push it to the side. Those were the kinds of things that I really wanted to focus on this weekend. 

Number two for me was my team. Now I wasn't quite ready to hire, but I knew that it was coming, and I really wanted to make sure that I hired the most effective person onto my team, as opposed to just what I thought I needed. I really wanted to look at the numbers. I wanted to look at the systems in my business, look at the business coming in, look at what I'm actually doing in my business, and what I would be able to gladly handoff. And when I look at all of those tasks. What type of role works for that as opposed to just hiring for a specific role and trying to fit all of these things into that. And that was super enlightening.

And then the third thing for me was my business offerings. So y'all there was so much evolving here. Let me explain. When I first launched, I didn't know exactly what to offer people because up until this point it was friends and family who were coming to me with business ideas. And so that was one thing that, like I'm not really sure what people will pay for. So I kind of launched with offerings that I thought would work. But I began to realize very quickly that people needed something that was a little bit more specific. And so I began to create custom proposals for clients based on their needs. Now, this was great. The problem was I ended up being all over the place and doing all types of things in different people's businesses. It wasn't really playing to my strengths.

So I was kind of figuring this out. I had launched the course, and I felt really good about that and I really felt like my business was going in that direction. That was the need that I really saw everyone needed. They’d missed this crucial step of having a business plan, and I wanted to figure out how to make that work and create my own framework around that. So all of this was kind of happening in that moment but I wasn't able to articulate it like I even am right now. I was just kind of figuring it out. So you might be in a space where you're like, there's a lot going on in my business. Business is great but it is all over the place. I don't really know if this is sustainable. I don't really know if I'm serving my clients in the best way. How do I need to evolve and adapt? That's something that you can really dive into when you have this container, this space, this total immersion weekend where you can focus on it and be full in. 

So those were the three places in my business that I needed to focus. I wanted to leave this weekend, having more organization around content management, and just, in general, all the organization of documents and stuff on my computer and all that. Google Drive, Dropbox, all of that. I wanted there to be more organization. Also, I wanted to know, okay, when I hire next where am I going to hire? Who is that person? What do I need? And then thirdly, how do I adapt my business offerings? Where am I headed in terms of what I offer people to serve them as they grow their business? 

So those are my three pain points that I was focusing on this weekend. So then I would suggest that you create an agenda ahead of time. I could not. Like I said I was in the middle of actually delivering the course content to my students live. When I booked it for a month out we were just finishing up. I remember actually that week. Oh Lord, I actually met with each of my students who were ready to talk through their business plan. So I had so many meetings that last week leading up to my total immersion weekend. I mean, nonstop, reviewing business plans with my students and I loved it. I was actually also connecting them with veteran entrepreneurs in their space so that they could learn more from someone who did exactly what they were trying to do and it was just everything. I loved it so much. It's like one of my favorite things ever. So it was great, but it was a lot, you know. It was a lot of emotional toll, physical toll, mental toll, right? So it was perfect that I booked the total immersion weekend for that weekend, even though it wasn't relaxing. 

I did feel like I had some really great momentum and I was building on it that weekend. I was not able to create an agenda ahead of time, but it's not that big of a deal. I did it when I got there. So I want to make sure that you don't just kind of go into randomly working during this weekend, that you actually have a plan. This is what I'm going to work on. This is my idea of how it's going to flow throughout the weekend so that you can really hold yourself accountable and not start just doing a whole bunch of random stuff. Okay, so if you can ahead of time, have your agenda, which of course is going to just be based off of those three pain points. Which one is the highest priority? Focus there first and then, on and on, so that once you get there if it's already done, your agenda, you can just get right to work. 

So, I get to the hotel, I check in. The very first thing I did, I just prayed. I was like, God, I need You to work in and through me during this weekend. I don't want to just have all these plans. I need You to help me effectuate them. And for you, it might be meditating. But it's just getting into a place where you are calm and you are focused, and you set an intention for the weekend. 

Then after I did that, I think this is really really important. I don't want you to just dive right in, because there will likely be if you are an entrepreneur running a business, there will likely be things that you need to do. Like, you need to respond to this client email. You need to check in with the family. You need to do these few things. And the reason I wanted to go ahead and take care of that is because I don't want them to be playing in the back of your head while you need to focus on this other stuff. I had some very important emails to get to a few clients, deliverables to make real quick. Again, ideally, you wouldn't have that. But this is what it's like, right? This is real life. So I got all of that out of the way so that I could really focus for the rest of my time. 

Then I turned on Do Not Disturb mode. Before I started on Do Not Disturb, I checked in with my mom who had my kids. It was like everything good? Great. I checked with my husband, he was good. He was on board. I had low-key wanted him to come last minute and he was like, “No, you told me that this was supposed to just work.” I'm like, you're right, you're right. I just like hanging out with him. But he was good, so I was really able to put my phone on Do Not Disturb mode and focus. So I went in and I just went step by step down my agenda of these things I wanted to focus on. 

I want to remind you to eat. Many of you were like, “What? I don't need a reminder to eat. I love food. I am a foodie.” Y'all, I don't know if y'all know this. I don't think I've ever said it on the pod. I am the opposite of a foodie. It’s really strange. I know it's really hard to explain and I hope you don't love me any less. But I do not live to eat, I just eat to live. Like if I could push a button and be fed, great. That would be one less thing that I have to do and can keep it moving. But no, I forget to eat a lot. So make sure you eat so that you can continue to have energy to work through this weekend. And also move your body, I'm really bad at getting into a workflow, you know, flow state. And just going and it'll be like four or five hours. I look up and my legs are cramping, my back aches, my neck is hurting and it's just because I haven't moved my body. So get up, walk around. I had a little patio in my hotel, so I just sat on the patio every now and then. Moved around the hotel if I needed to. But I mostly stayed in my room, that first day, and ordered room service. What I did not want to do, y'all was, it’s Sunday, and I'm getting ready to checkout and like I did not get stuff done in my business. That would have broken my whole heart. So I wanted to make sure that from the very beginning, I was going full throttle so that I could adjust as needed. But making sure I got the most important stuff done. So, I want to make sure you remember to eat and move your body. And if you can fit in a massage or a yoga class or something fun like, feel free. Obviously, you can make this your own. I actually did plan to have a massage. I think I had planned it for Sunday. But I ended up not doing it because I was in such a good space on Sunday and wanted to keep working because it was so magical what was happening. I was like no, I gotta keep this up, and so I didn't do the massage. But if that's something that you can fit in that will help you and serve you, totally do it. 

The main thing is that you want to leave this weekend with real clarity, right? Like, amazing clarity in your business, and ensuring that you are hitting on those pain points and working out those kinks, and cleaning up those messy areas in your business so that you are able to literally just move forward like from jump. Like boom, let's go, when you get back into your regular work life. 

So I want to share a little bit about how this impacted me. Oh yeah. So, I'm kind of going off of notes that I actually wrote during that weekend, because I had gotten such great response from the Instagram stories. But as I got ready to make a podcast episode out of this, I wrote a lot of notes and I remember that moment where I sat down at the hotel, and I looked back at the goals that I made in my very first business plan. I had a business plan that I had developed when I launched back in November, and y'all I looked at the goals that I outlined, and I had already achieved three of the seven big goals. And two of those other goals were almost to the finish line and it was crazy. It was wild, and I mean I was just three months into my business again. It took off a lot faster than I thought it would. 

But this was the sad part y'all. I knew that what I was doing was not working. It was not sustainable like I said. The projects were so custom. It was just way too much. I wasn't able to streamline things. I wasn't working to my strengths. So although the business was doing very well, I needed to figure out a system to make it all work right. What this weekend did for me was that it validated the direction that I was syncing my business to go in. And that was huge, because, you know, you have these feelings, your intuition, especially as an entrepreneur around your business. You're like, should I be doing that? But like, no. But this is bringing in money. This seems to be working. I'm just gonna keep doing that. You keep having these tugs and these pools. So I think this could really be good if I put more attention or focus there. That's what was happening. Then when I sat down and had this total immersion weekend and was able to really pinpoint my pain areas, and like work through them. I began to say, oh no, I have to pivot, I have to change, right now. Like, can not waste any more time. Because it made sense. I looked at the numbers. I looked at the trends. I looked at feedback. I looked at what I enjoy doing in my business. What made me the happiest. What was the most draining and all of that. And so this weekend really helped validate what I was sensing in my spirit that I needed to do. 

The second thing it did was just helped me get organized. I don't know about y'all, but if I'm not organized, I feel like I'm a crazy person, like I'm just running around. Like, I don't know what's really happening. I'm just doing stuff. I can't operate as my best self in that space. So, the organization piece was everything I could go to my Google Docs and see all of my stuff lined up. I knew exactly where to go if I had an idea. Exactly where to put it. There was no more of, wait, wait, did I add that to a voice note or to my iCal notes or to Google? It was just like, No. I have a process now and that was everything for me. 

And another thing, which is the big thing. I'm so grateful I did this pre-COVID because had I not done this preCOVID, like I said, this was the end of February. So, little did I know in like three weeks, we would be closing our gym business for two months. We'd be closing the doors for two months because of a global pandemic. What? I'm so glad that I had set intentional time before all of that because I don't know if those bright shiny objects that come our way when chaos and crisis and change is happening might have looked more attractive. Because I didn't have a plan. Because I hadn't validated what I was feeling in my spirit. So I'm just so glad that I did that. 

And so it's why I don't really want you to wait either like if you're feeling like this is something I really need to do in my business. Do it because it might not be another COVID Lord Jesus please let it not be another COVID or anything like it. But it could be anything in your personal life that could come and derail you or make you have less motivation. But if you've already gone through this process, it's done. You know what you need to do, you have a game plan and you're able to move forward. 

So I want to read this journal note that I wrote. Again, I was really intentional about journaling through this process and even after because I knew it could be really helpful for people. And I took a journal note on March 3, 2020. So this was the week after I had my total immersion weekend, and this is what it said. “This is the first week I actually know what I will offer clients when they book calls. No more stress every time I see an email come through.” And that's really vulnerable for me to say here on the podcast. But ya know, I've tried to keep it real and keep it appropriate, but keep it real too. But it's just that. I mean it had gotten to a point where every single time someone booked a consultation call, I was stressed, a little bit. Because it was like, oh my goodness, can I take on more people? What are they going to need that’s specific to their business? I don't even know how this is going to work. 

And now I knew. There are two ways to work with me, my business plan process or strategy sessions. And strategy sessions are where we can get specific in your business, but there's a process to it. You book a call. We have the call. You get the audio recording from the session. You get a game plan by the end of the session and then there's a 30-minute follow-up call. That felt good to me, that felt good to me in the sense that I could serve people well with that. And it worked for me too. I felt it worked in terms of my schedule, and my bandwidth as well. And in terms of the business plan process, it was the same thing. I knew, okay, this is working for people. I want to make sure I can provide it in a streamlined way. So if you want to work with me, those are the two ways. 

I know, I know you're listening to my story, but it was a huge breakthrough for me because again before this, I was all over the place. So, this weekend was so great for that. I just want to encourage you if this resonates with you. If this sounds like something I need to do, go ahead and do it. Go ahead and schedule your total immersion weekend, and not just in your head. I want you to add it to your calendar. And if you're listening in real-time, and you just like need me to help you pick a date. I would say to either choose the first weekend of the next quarter. So like we're in September right now and the next quarter, Q4 is October. So I'd aim to have my total immersion weekend the first weekend in October. I like doing it kind of quarterly because you're able to look back on the last quarter, and it really coincides with your quarterly business plan review which you should be doing anyway. You're always going to be reviewing your business plan every single quarter, looking at what worked, what didn't, and so on. So this can coincide with that if you were gonna do that already. But at the very least, if you don't do it. In October, do it by the end of the year, or before the holidays and I say, the end of the year because this could be a great addition to like an annual meeting. 

Okay, we talked about LLCs and how it helps to provide a barrier between you and your business and your personal assets, right? But you can't just get your LLC paperwork signed, and that's it. You actually have to make it real, you have to legitimize it and you do that by having an operating agreement. You do that by having an annual meeting or at least having a form that you sign that says, I didn't have an annual meeting this year. I'm going way left with legal stuff but it's so important that you don't just have an LLC, that you are not piercing the corporate veil by having a joint bank account with your business and your personal funds being commingled and stuff like that. So I say all that to say, it's about to be the end of 2020 and to have an annual meeting, and it's something that can also be a business expense, however, you do it, and this could be something that you do in your annual meeting. And I say before the holidays because y'all, I don't want you to wait until we're in the middle of the holiday season to start trying to evaluate what happened in 2020, and what you're going to do in 2021. Because that's just not realistic, and because I want you to enjoy your life. Last Christmas was crazy for me. I don't know if I've shared this on the podcast before. But on Christmas Eve, it was like 3 AM, and I was working on Christmas Eve, and I was so frustrated. I was happy. I felt alive and onpoint and like this is right and this is great. I had just launched a month ago. But I also was like this is a hot mess. I get it being here right now, a month into my new business. But I cannot be here next year. I cannot be up at 3 AM on Christmas Eve working next year. So I don't want you to put yourself in that same situation. You don't have to wait until the last minute. You can be ahead of the holidays when things are gonna get crazy. There may be Christmas holiday parties, I don't know. I don't know how that's gonna look. But it's gonna get busy, potentially. So don't wait until you're in the middle of all that happy, happy time of the year and you're having to kind of do all this. Go ahead and do it now and so that you're able to really enjoy that time and then start 202 strong. 2021. Just sounds good. It just rolls off my tongue. Anyone excited about 2021, especially after a year like this? We want to make sure that you have a strong start to the new year. And, yeah, it's just important for so many reasons that you do that.  Thanksgiving will be here before we know it. Don't get caught up. Go ahead and book your total immersion weekend. You can book it along with your annual meeting for your business. You can book it to coincide with your quarterly business plan review. You can do all three of those together, but you want to have time in your business where you focus on fixing the messy parts. And that's what I did and it was huge for me and huge for my business. And I'm so grateful I did it when I did. 

As always if you have any questions please don't hesitate to reach out to me. You can hit me up. You can email me, hello@birdwilliamsconsulting.com, or just shoot me a DM on Instagram. I'm @birdwilliamsconsulting. But I really appreciate you following along with the podcast. Please make sure that you subscribe here on Apple Podcasts, or if you're on Spotify, make sure you hit that follow button. And as always, to all of your entrepreneur friends about the Bird Means Business podcast. Alright, talk to you next week.