E18 It’s not the end of the year, yet.

Leanne Woff: [00:00:00] Hello, hello, hello! Welcome to another episode of The Audacious OBM. I’m Leanne Woff, I’m your host, [00:01:00] and today I want to talk to you about focus. The title of this episode is called It’s Not the End of the Year Yet. Now what do I mean by that? I mean it is almost October, not even October, at the time of recording this.

And a lot of us have entered into end of the year mode. And so I’m hearing a lot of Christmas is coming. The sky is falling. We’re all running around and freaking out because the year’s gone so fast. And I was having a conversation and I was asked what I was focused on. And then

somebody else mentioned, oh, it’s the end of the year. And then the person we were having a conversation with said, guys, it’s only October. And I stood back and I [00:02:00] thought, you know what, it’s only October. And even if it wasn’t, does it really matter? So the end of the year, it’s the last quarter.

There’s a whole quarter, one fourth, 25%. If you could achieve 25 percent more every single year, would you be happy? That seems like a lot and I think by writing off the last quarter, because it’s close to Christmas, we’re giving away that 25 percent and nothing is making us do that. We’re doing it to ourselves.

And so, we go into this panic of, it’s nearly Christmas, it’s nearly Christmas, we should be winding down and we set these imaginary deadlines. Now, I know I just closed my launch for OBM Academy. And a couple of people [00:03:00] emailed me back and the feedback is always very similar. This sounds amazing. This is exactly what I need.

And then it goes two ways. Either people sign up or people say, but not yet. And part of the not yet this time was I know that I won’t be able to commit at this point in towards the end of the year. 25%, it’s a whole quarter and it wasn’t until I was explaining this back to people that I realised that that’s actually an issue for us.

We look at opportunities and we stop because it’s the last quarter. And then we miss out on all the things we could have had and could have achieved. So what if it was more about setting yourself up for the next year or the next thing? Like you’ve still got three full months. What could you achieve in three months?

And while I understand it, because I do it too, it’s nearly the end of [00:04:00] the year, it’s nearly the end of the year, and then you look back and you look at all the things you have done and all the things you haven’t done, and you go into this thoughts pile. But can I tell you something? Today is no different than yesterday.

Nothing has really changed because of where we are in the year. Our daily life is still our daily life. Our businesses are still our businesses. And although there are seasons, and I understand that it’s not, there’s nothing that, solidly happens once we hit Christmas or hit the new year that says stop and start.

It’s from one day to the next. And so can I tell you something? If at Christmas you’re tired, then the day after Christmas, you’re still going to be tired. And if you. End of the year in kind of a slump, you’ll probably start in a slump until you decide to change it. So, this changed my perception a little bit from, Oh, we’re winding [00:05:00] down, we won’t do anything big towards the end of the year.

It’s it’s October. It’s not like we’re a week away from holidays, guys. And so I decided that I’m going to focus on being focused. So I have the tendency to do a lot of things all at once and sometimes I get really excited and then I do the things I’m excited about and then don’t do the things that I decided were strategically worth it, because I want to do the fun thing.

And so for this next quarter, I don’t want to just scale down and flit through, which sometimes, there are seasons where you just need to go with the flow a little bit and take pressure off. But right now I don’t need that. Right now I still want to achieve things and I don’t want it to be really hard, [00:06:00] but I want to make sure I’m achieving the right things.

So to do that, the first step was determining, okay, what are the things, what are we going to be focused on? And for me, it’s picking whatever it is and then sticking to it. So this is what I came up with. I was going to record more episodes of this podcast. See what I did there. I’m going to write my OBM Coaching Sales Page and my Empire Builder Coaching Sales Page, which I actually don’t want to be a big drawn out thing, but I want them to be on my website and at least they’re there and accessible.

And then I want to do, I bought this metrics course a while ago and it’s how to set up all different data driven models in your business and how to do like metrics measurement for marketing to get to [00:07:00] business goals. And it’s not a big thing. It’s a small, smallish kind of course, but it’s just so interesting.

And I’ve wanted to do it for ages. So I want to finish that. And then the next thing is equipping my team, which I’ve already started doing. And so it’s getting everybody into really good positions, knowing what their role is, knowing what they’re doing, having them have enough space and time to do their best work, to do work they like, and just getting really clear on what those things are.

So they’re the things I decided to focus on. Now, I have loads of other things on my list, but I’m focusing on focusing. So before I can do any of the other things that are on my list, I have to do these things. And for instance, one of the other things that’s been on my list for ages is to properly set up my call booking page.

And so I did it for my [00:08:00] intro calls and did a little bit of a hack job to put it together. Because it’s really, really silly to be an OBM. An OBM coach, just a general Tech Ninja will not have a call booking link. It’s one of those really obvious things that I just never got around to doing. And so it’s nagging at me because I’m like, I just want to do it, but it’s actually not the priority.

So I have to pause. And until I’ve done my focused things, I can’t do that. And then that can be my, my treat. They’re still important, but they’re not what I’ve chosen to be the priority. So, as we move through to the end of the year, three days ago, it was my opinion that I didn’t have any of these focuses.

I had some stuff I wanted to do, and if I got around to it, I got around to it. But now, I feel like I’ve just been given back three months, [00:09:00] just from that shift. And that, I’ve got three months, what can I do? What should we do? And all of a sudden my list is bigger and bigger, but I have things I feel like I can achieve, and I will.

And so, I just wanted to talk about the illusion that we create, that we pick a month and then we say from here it all trinkles down and I’ll have less energy and I’ll there’s no point in really ramping anything up because people are winding down. It’s just not the way life works anymore.

But, if I think about it, when I was a teenager, and it would be holidays, and I would plonk my bum on my couch and watch episode after episode of Gilmore Girls and Friends and would love life and sleep in until 12 or 1 PM. That is not what holidays look like anymore. Holidays do not look like sitting in a camping chair, reading book after book.

[00:10:00] It’s, it’s so not the same. Life is too fast paced now. And despite that, I have like eleventy billion children. so I just go from one job to another. And I’m not saying it’s not nice, like holidays are good. And when I do get. Some rest and to restore, but it doesn’t mean I’m scrambling to the end of the year, dragging, waiting, waiting for this break.

I don’t feel like that. And if I don’t feel like that, there is no point in me completely stopping just because we’re three months out from an imaginary deadline. So. I’m going to stop putting rules around what I can start and what I can’t start based on imaginary things. And so I just wanted to share that with you and encourage you that if you do want to keep going, you can.

And it doesn’t have to be big astronomical things, but it just [00:11:00] doesn’t have to stop because we’ve put on the looking downhill act. So my question for you, what are you focusing on this quarter? Pick one and then DM me at audaciousempires@leannewoff or send me an email or leave a raving review for this podcast.

You know that you want to. Alright guys, I hope that that gives you some fun and some joy towards the last quarter. Enjoy your 25 percent and I’ll see you next week. Bye!

Have a great week.

 [00:12:00]

E17 How many clients should an Online Business Manager work with? Why your big client is a big mistake.

Leanne Woff: [00:00:00] Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of the Audacious OBM. [00:01:00] I’m Leanne Woff and today we are talking about how many clients should an online business manager have? Why your big client is your worst mistake.

Okay. So I wanted to chat to you about this today because I was speaking with one of my OBM Academy students earlier. And something that she said really stuck with me, and that is that she’d been speaking to lots of other experienced VAs or people in the OBM space who had been working in the industry for quite a long time.

So they’re quite successful. And she was feeling like she’d done the wrong thing. Because these experienced people and other coaches had said to her you [00:02:00] have too many small clients. Why are you operating like that? You need a big client. Now, as soon as she said that, I was shocked. Because generally, that is not the advice I would give someone.

And here’s why. In my opinion, it makes life harder and there is a few things that you need to consider if you’re going to bring in a big, big client. It’s going to make life easy because you have to work with less people. You don’t have to do as many small jobs. It’s easy to keep on top of everything.

But here’s the things that we don’t talk about.

The risk. So the big client, usually with big clients comes big revenue. That’s the attraction, right? But… It has the [00:03:00] risk of putting all of your eggs in one basket, which means that while it can have a quick boost in revenue and that can feel amazing, it also creates a lot of risk for you because what happens if that contract doesn’t go ahead or it is going really, really well and you’re so happy and you’re getting along great with the client and then their factory burns down and all of a sudden you don’t have your place with them anymore.

Overnight, you have gone from being really fruitful and having lots of money to not a lot at all because you had invested so much of you in this big client. So it’s actually quite a large financial risk. [00:04:00] Another thing that we don’t really consider or that we don’t talk about is the fact that when you have a big, amazing client.

It tends to stunt your business growth, for practical reasons. You spend so much time servicing this client and you know you really appreciate having a big client. So then it’s the investment of time, plus it’s then the client satisfaction piece and the nurture of this client and your resources become limited.

And so what naturally starts to happen, is the marketing falls away, the networking falls away, the working on your business instead of in your business falls away. Right. And at the time you know that it’s probably not the best idea, but it’s what’s necessary, and it’s bringing the money in, so it’s like, cool, great, let’s do it.

The next thing is that it’s not scalable, [00:05:00] because if you’re working quite closely with a big client, guess what? That big client is always going to want to work with you, specifically. They are a client of yours and your person, not your brand. Not the business. If you get somebody else in to help, that big client probably isn’t going to like it very much because that’s not what they’re used to and that’s not really what they signed up for.

So even if you get to the point where you think, oh, this is just too much. I need to scale back a bit. The likelihood is that you won’t be able to with that big client. So in a way, we are giving ourselves less options. Another risk that we really need to consider, and especially for our clients, we need to start having these conversations, is the difference between [00:06:00] an employee and a contractor.

Because there are all different laws depending on the country and the state that you live in, but I know here there are definite laws and rules around what is considered a contractor and what is considered an employee. And one of those factors is how much of your income and how much of your business effort goes into supporting a variety of clients.

And if you are starting to hit that limit and possibly be deemed as an employee, then you’re actually putting your client at risk because technically that’s how the law sees you. You’re an employee and then you might end up having that client might have other obligations to you that even if you weren’t requesting them, they still need to be fulfilling.

And then if [00:07:00] The governing body finds out that technically they’re an employee and you as the employer, your client, aren’t giving them these benefits or these necessities more than they’re going to get in trouble. And not everybody knows this and it is all information that can be found and is available, but it changes and it changes over time and it’s different in every place, but it’s still worth knowing that information and sharing it.

Because I would hate to be working really well with the client, work with them for a long time, and then find out that they’ve received a, a slap on the wrist or a big, big fine for an arrangement we had together and I didn’t really think about it and they didn’t really think about it. So it is worth a conversation and it is something that comes into play when you’re starting to put all your eggs in one basket.

And then the final [00:08:00] thing that I want to highlight is the mental and the emotional toll. If for whatever reason, this contract doesn’t last, it might only be for a small period or something in the business might change, but what we tend to do is we lose a client. And then we think, what did I do wrong?

How did I stuff this up so badly? And we start to go down this negative spiral. And then on top of that, we’re faced with feelings of failure. I finally was getting the amount of revenue that I wanted. I was finally getting paid properly. I could see all of my options and now all of a sudden they’re all gone.

And how did I get here? I feel like I’m back at the start. And you know what, none of that is actually true. As humans, we still have to process each piece of that until we [00:09:00] come out the other side. And it’s not a great place to be. And in my opinion, I would like to keep that place and how long I’m in that place to a minimum.

So, no, I disagree. Your big goal shouldn’t be to get a big client to make it all easy. It’s not going to fix things for you. It’s just really risky. So what do we do instead? We make the smaller clients less small. And we make the big clients less big. And what I mean by that is you might have, a group of small offers that you have.

They don’t bring in a lot of revenue but they’re there and you can do it and it’s great. Instead of them being at the price you have them now, increase them a little bit and [00:10:00] possibly make those offers a bit larger. Think a little bit bigger. Not astronomically, like they can still be you know, on the smaller end.

But let’s just make them a bit more chunky so that then you’re getting a little bit more revenue in with each one of them. Then, we want to make the big ones less big. So think about that type of client and think, okay, how can I pull this down into a package or an offer that’s maybe a piece of what I was doing?

And then maybe I can have three clients at that level. Instead of just one big one. And then that way, if I lose one, I have some time to get another one for the whole ship sinks. Or if we’re really, really convinced now we just want a really big client and then to have, a handful of small clients [00:11:00] that we service too, make sure you build in a buffer with that big client so that then no matter what happens, you can put some money aside.

And if you lose that client, you’ve got a few months to find another one. And then you don’t end up in this panicky position.

What we want to be doing is keeping the profit level very similar. So just because we have smaller offers and bigger offers doesn’t mean that the small offers need to have less profit or be less profitable. They’re just bite sized pieces. They’re still just as good a service. It’s just a piece of it instead of a whole big chunk of it.

And so if we can balance out that profit a bit more, we don’t have to keep putting big amounts of effort and energy into these jobs that take heaps and heaps of time. [00:12:00] The revenue, though, that’s what makes the big ones big. If we know that our profit is fairly even across the board, then it is the revenue factor that comes into play and it means that we have to sell less to get the same amount of money, essentially.

And so what if we can create some more organic marketing systems within our business? To keep the revenue coming in because the reality is with smaller offers, you need to sell more of them. You need to market more of them to different people. And that’s where we kind of struggle because it feels like we’re selling all the time.

But if we’re not just selling and if we have some systems in place to keep ourselves visible and to be speaking to our audience and the clients who really want what we have, then it’s not going to feel like selling all the time. [00:13:00] Plus, the fact that we’ve made our Smalls a little bit bigger and our Bigs a little bit smaller means that we actually don’t need to sell as many across the board.

We want to create a nice big picture. So that’s really what I wanted to talk to you about today. And it is your business can look however it wants. And if you are thinking about taking on that big, big client, just think about the full picture of it. There is no, Oh, these people are successful. And they said, I have to, so I do.

It’s just not true. You get to do what you’re comfortable with doing. And I don’t want anybody to ever feel like. They were going in the right direction and they had it all sorted and they felt on top of the world and then it all came crumbling down because of one client. One client does not make your business.

Your business and all of the [00:14:00] pieces of it are what make your business. Thanks guys. Have a great week.

E16 How flexible should I be with clients? 6 things to consider before saying yes or no.

Leanne Woff: [00:00:00] Hello, hello. Welcome to another episode of [00:01:00] the Audacious OBM. I’m Leanne and today we are talking about flexibility. So a question I often get asked is how flexible should I be with my clients? And I believe there are six things we need to consider before we say yes or no to requests around being flexible.

That’s what I want to talk to you about today. So the six things are my number one rule for flexibility, what my baseline on making decisions around flexibility is, The benefits of being flexible. The cost of being too flexible. Managing requests with integrity. And the final one is sticking to your [00:02:00] role.

So hopefully this gives you a little bit of a framework and a way that you can build in the right level of flexibility to different requests day in and day out. All right, so number one. My rule in flexibility is – My Brand Is Flexible. We are flexible when we can be and never when we can’t be. So I’ve had situations recently where, I’ll have my team say to me, “Oh, what/how are we going to handle this?

Or what do we say? It’s not what we would normally do.” And this is my, that I go back to my rule. We are flexible when we can be and never when we can’t be. And what that means is. As long as we’re staying within our role and within our boundaries, but we [00:03:00] need to change something to benefit the client and the impact is not astronomical for us, then of course we’re going to be flexible.

They’re not asking for anything that’s wildly outlandish. If what they’re asking for jeopardizes the project, well then yeah, we have to have a stronger conversation about that. If we believe it’s unrealistic, if we believe that it is way out of scope. These are all things that make it harder for us to be flexible.

And there are just certain things where I’m unwilling to compromise. And so what are those things? Which brings me to my second point. What is your baseline for making decisions around flexibility? For me, this always comes down to values. What do I value [00:04:00] and what does that look like? For example, I value people and I value family and I would never want to jeopardize anyone’s people or anyone’s family.

And so if I had a client who came and said, Hey I really need some more of your help. And I think it needs to be in person. And I need you to fly across the country once a week on a Wednesday to do this for me. Now, if I match that against my values of family, It doesn’t really sit very well because I know that then every Wednesday, I am not going to be able to do my son’s homework with him or take him to his activities.

And it’s something that I really enjoy and he really [00:05:00] enjoys and I think that it brings stability. So asking me to travel across the country once a week, it’s actually something I cannot.

I’m not willing to ask myself, my family, or my team or their family to give something like that up, especially if I can find an alternate way to get the same result. Now, does that mean that every time a client asks me for something in terms of, “I need you to be away from your family,” that I’m going to say no?

No, it doesn’t. Because if my client said to me, “Hey, I have a really big event coming up, it’s in eight months time and it will just make my life so much easier if you’re there, are you able to do this?” Then I’m going to talk to my son and say, Hey, this one week I’m not going to be there, but [00:06:00] it’s okay because dad is going to take you and I’ll be back on Monday.

And then next week I’ll take you again and I’ll sacrifice that little piece for my client, ’cause I don’t think they’re being unreasonable. I don’t think the cost of that flexibility is going to have a real impact or jeopardize my values. So that’s how I generally will measure things is what’s the actual impact of this and how much does it matter and at

what level. Then we be flexible? If it’s only going to cost me and it’s not going to do anything for me, well, then why would I do it? And the truth is, I don’t think anybody is really that hard or that self absorbed, but I believe that in most things, there needs to be [00:07:00] balance and fairness. If you give a little, you get a little, and you know what I’ve noticed?

If I’m a little bit within reason, flexible with my clients, they’re flexible with me. Because at the end of the day, we’re all people, and life is never black and white, and neither is business. It’s not black and white, it’s not repeatable, the scenarios are not guaranteed to happen in the same way every time.

And so the sooner that we recognize that, the better it will be for us. Because then when something unexpected happens or someone does request a little bit of consideration and flexibility, we’re not surprised and we know how to handle it. So I do think that there is a big benefit in being [00:08:00] flexible with consideration.

But then what’s the flip side? What’s the cost of being too flexible? Now that is one that I think more of us struggle with. We’re too flexible and we struggle with boundaries and setting boundaries

and keeping boundaries.

The cost of that is burnout and being resentful. If we don’t, keep to our boundaries. If we say yes and then yes again and then yes again, even though we don’t want to, even though the things we’re being asked are some of those things that we really shouldn’t negotiate on, then we’re not really living a great business.

We’re constantly giving everything that matters away and not getting anything in return and we feel like ‘Yes, yes, yes. [00:09:00] I’ve given you so much!’ You can’t then expect other people or clients to see that the same way. They’ve asked you for something. You’ve said yes. They don’t owe you anything for that.

It’s not like you said to them okay, this is going to be extremely hard for me and I don’t really normally do it and all of these things, so that they fully understand what they’re asking for. If they’ve just asked you and you said yes and they ask you something else and you say yes, that’s on you.

And so it’s really important. That we think things through and that we are flexible when we can be and not when we can’t be. So that then we don’t end up resentful of things clients never intended to do in the first place. And we don’t end up burnt out and unable to work with anybody because we’ve said yes just too many times.

[00:10:00] Then, we need to be considerate and be quite logical in a business sense when we’re managing requests. We need to manage them with integrity. And what I mean by this is we need to come back to what we’ve offered in the first place and what we’ve sold. Because if I have said to somebody, yep, I’m going to come in and I’m going to completely overhaul your whole digital ecosystem.

I’m going to look at your tech stack. I’m going to look at your marketing and we’re going to come up with the best plan for you and a whole new ecosystem. And then we get into the project and I say to my clients, oh yeah, but I only work with these certain tools, or I’m only going to consider these certain marketing avenues.

Because that’s what I’m most comfortable with. [00:11:00] Well, that’s not really what you’ve sold the client. You’ve sold the client an ecosystem that is customized to them, not customized within your small pool. And so in matters like that, it’s actually not in integrity for you to say, no, I only work with these things and you’ll just have to deal with that.

Because it’s not what you sold. But if you do want to operate in a manner that is very clear cut, then you just change your offer and you start saying, Hey, I can build you a really great ecosystem that consists of these things. These are the tools that I love. This is how they can work together. It’s incredible.

I’ve built something like this many, many times and this is the outcome I get. There are ways to do it. But you need to position it properly first. Otherwise, you need to be flexible and possibly step out of your comfort [00:12:00] zone a little bit. And then the final thing that you need to consider is what your role is.

And really staying in your role. So as online business managers, we are there to make our clients lives easier. To make them infinitely better. Incredible. To help them reach their goals. To make their dreams come true. They have the vision, we bring it to life. That makes you secondary. This isn’t actually all about you.

You’re a partner in there, but it is not all your way or the highway. And we have to remember, our job there is to support another business, to make something else thrive. When you’re picking tools or [00:13:00] working within tools, you need to be thinking about your client first. And we want our clients to be able to easily interact with us.

And still get what we need. But at the end of the day, that easy factor needs to be for them first. So for instance, something that happens in my business is we work with a lot of clients and we use, all their different systems. And that includes project management systems. So if we’re working with operations, Generally, we’re going to be in a client’s project management system to manage whatever we’re doing and the team.

As a result of that, a lot of our activities have to also go into our own project management system, so our business, so that we can see everything that’s happening [00:14:00] from our brand’s perspective and for capacity measurement. And so the impact of that is that things get double handled because we’ve got to track it for ourselves and then we’ve got to track it for our clients.

And if I was to cut one of those off, it would have to be my own. I would only have it in the client’s thing. Because my job is to support them and not to take a piece of their business away from their business. So their assets, their communication, it should all be within their systems. Because at the end of the day, if I walk away, that plan is still theirs.

Their, their team is in there. Their team shouldn’t be in your system. And if that means that there’s some double handling and overlap in my land that’s for me to resolve. And if I choose to automate that so I don’t have to deal [00:15:00] with the whole manual entry, fantastic. But it wouldn’t be reasonable for me to say to my client, no, you can just go online because it’ll be easier for me.

Because that’s not our role. And so when we’re looking at being flexible, we also need to come back to that purpose. What are we here for? How are we doing it? Am I honoring that? So I hope that that’s giving you some food for thought around how flexible we can be, how flexible we should be. And no, there is no black and white.

As much as I would love to give you black and white rules, it’s something you do have to figure out and you have to think about. Think about those boundaries and your values and come up with your own little system to manage flexibility because people will always ask for flexibility because [00:16:00] life is just not straightforward.

That’s all from me for today. If you enjoyed this episode, please give me a five star rating review. Otherwise, Sabrina on my team will cry. Thanks so much. See you next week, guys.

 [00:17:00] 

Lead management success: 5 questions I ask every new OBM lead

Leanne Woff: [00:00:00] Hello, hello, hello! Welcome to the latest episode of the Audacious OBM. I’m Leanne Woff and [00:01:00] today we are talking all things leads management success. The five questions I ask every new OBM lead. Now, I wanted to share this with you as it came from a question from one of my students in OBM Academy, and it’s around the leads process and how much information is too much information.

And when do we ask what? So in my true style, I went back with exactly what I do in my business and what I have always done for years. And I believe it works really well. So there are five questions, and I believe these five questions give me enough information and insight into what my potential new clients are experiencing right now and where they want to go to.

And that usually gives me enough information to tell me [00:02:00] whether I can help them or not, without having a hundred different things that they have to give me. In this episode, I’m going to cover off the five. The first, what is happening in your business at the moment? So it seems very basic, tell me what’s happening, but the reason I ask this, the insight you will gain is what is the most pressing for them, the make or breaks.

So the beauty of an open ended question like this, is that they will tell you whatever is at the forefront of their mind. So they could say, Oh, in my business, I have 27 clients and I make a hundred million dollars. And we just got a new logo created, [00:03:00] or they can say, I’m really frustrated. I was trying to get my team to launch a new program, and I just couldn’t get them to work together, and then I didn’t sell any spots, and I just know I can’t do this anymore.

They’re going to tell you exactly what they’re experiencing, and the crucial pieces of information that usually tie into how you need to help them. It gives you a little bit of background, and what the pivot point is, which then brings me to the next question, which is what was the push or problem causing you to reach out for help?

Now, a lot of the time when people actually send me an inquiry, they call or they send me an email. It’s not the first time they’ve thought [00:04:00] about getting support in their business. It’s not the first time they’ve thought about maybe I need an online business manager. Usually it’s out of frustration or something that has happened repeatedly or something that they want so badly and something else has reminded them of it.

And this is really important for us to know because there’s emotion behind it. And so what asking this question gives us is, insight into what irritates them the most, what is, causing maximum pain or a desire that they want so badly that they’ve actually taken action to try and fulfill that.

So it’s telling you what matters to them, what matters to them, that matters to you right now. And it also tells you. What you need to [00:05:00] be able to resolve or what you need to be able to bring to life to then have a satisfied client. Okay, number three, what is your deadline? This question is purely about practicality.

So it’ll also give you insight into whether this client, perspective client is realistic or unrealistic or just has no clue. So it’s, it’s about seeing, okay, hey, let me know, because if you’re expecting me to reply, onboard you and have this job done in two days, the likelihood is it’s not going to happen.

And a lot of the time when I ask people what their deadline is, they’ll either give me a, like a solid date that’s in three months time, [00:06:00] or they’ll say, oh, I’m looking to onboard someone within the next few weeks and then hoping to get started by this day. Or they’ll say, I’m not really sure. And that’s okay too.

They don’t have to know. It is more about starting that conversation. And there’s a bonus advantage of this question. And that is you’re setting up the conversation to be a two way relationship. Your time matters. And my time matters. If your deadline is then that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m automatically going to say, yes, sure.

I actually need to know the deadline so I can see if that’s going to work for me. And it becomes a conversation and mutual respect.

Then we’re looking for, next question. What budget are you working with? Now this one tends to make people uncomfortable and a lot of online [00:07:00] business managers are too scared to ask. But it’s really important because the insight it gives us is the quality of the lead. Are they just tyre kickers and how much time should I as a service provider really sink into this lead?

Because I could talk to them and spend an hour and come up with a plan just to find out that they wanted to spend 50 dollars and they’ve already spoken to six other people and they found someone who can do it for 5 dollars. And so they’re not really interested and I have just wasted a big bunch of time and I don’t want to waste my time and I don’t want to waste their time.

So this helps you gauge where they’re sitting at the moment and what’s important to them because we want leads and clients who align with us and our values and who genuinely want a partner they can work with. [00:08:00] Someone who is skilled and talented, not just the cheapest person there is.

Then the final question, what are you trying to achieve? What are your burning desires for your business? This gives them the opportunity to tell you their big picture. It gives you insight into their overall vision. And then it helps you see where you could potentially slot in and help them achieve that vision.

We’re online business managers. It’s our job to pull things together so that we can get closer to that vision and closer to that vision. And for us to do that, we need to know what it is. And you might find by just knowing what that vision actually is. You can retrospectively start putting pieces together and go, okay if that’s where we want to go, I’m going to need this.

We’re going to need this. And have we tried this [00:09:00] and all of a sudden you get a feeling and you’ll get a feeling of, oh, this is exciting. And yeah, I can see that. And you get invested or you go, no, that’s not really what I’m about. That actually feels quite uncomfortable. And that tells you straight away that this lead.

Isn’t for you, but hey, you might know someone who you think that is this kind of person, that OBM would totally love this gig. And then you can refer them on and how cool is that? You avoid the misalignment and the friction that comes from that. You help somebody else out in your network, which I think is pretty cool.

So they’re my five questions and they are the five questions I send to everybody. I send them via email. I let them have a little think. And then once they’ve been able to answer that, I book in a call. And then I talk to them. And usually I talk through these questions again, so [00:10:00] I can get more of an answer and hear their tone and things like that.

But from this, I know if I’m the right kind of person for them, and if it is worth both of us spending more time chatting and getting to know each other. So if you are trying to establish a leads process, and do it a little bit more efficiently and effectively then these five questions, take them, use them, trust me.

Have a great day everybody. I’ll see you next week.

 [00:11:00] 

E14 The day it all turned to poo

 [00:00:00] Hey, hey, everybody, welcome to today’s episode of The Audacious OBM. I’m Leanne Woff, and today [00:01:00] I want to talk to you about a personal story. I have called this episode, The Day It All Turned to Poo. I know, charming, right? But it’s true. I want to talk to you about a time where I was probably the lowest point in my business, and I want to talk to you about what led me there and then what I did to turn it around.

I’m a big believer in being honest and being open and that we’re people that run businesses and life is never just smooth for anybody. And as people, things come up and we have to deal with them and it does impact our businesses because we’re very intertwined, even if we try not to be. Now, for me to fully explain to you what happened, there’s a couple things [00:02:00] you need to know about me.

Biggest one is that I’m a people pleaser. I always have been. I remember when I was a teenager and I would go to youth group and I made all different connections there. And one of my… Favorite leaders there, we went through a phase where she said to me, Leanne, you need to use the N word and like, what, what is she talking about?

Leanne, you need to learn to say no. You don’t always have to say yes. You can say no, and that’s okay, and so I want you to practice saying no, and so as a teenager, but over the next, couple of years, I’d be talking to her about different things that are happening in life, and she would say to me, Leanne, you need to use the [00:03:00] n word, and I would have to remember, oh.

Yeah. Okay. I can do that. I can do that. And then when I did and I started putting boundaries in place and I started saying no to different things for me, it was a big deal. And so I would go back to her and say, Sally, Sally, I said no. And then tell her what had happened was this big celebration, right? So it’s always something that I found really hard is to disappoint people or for what I believe or perceive is disappointing people.

The other thing that you need to know about me is I’m a perfectionist. At least I used to be, and I’m incredibly driven. I like to achieve things. And, you know, to the point where when I was older, so let’s move on from teenage years, I was going to the psychologist. [00:04:00] And she gave me homework. And the homework was to fail on purpose, which I just thought was ludicrous.

Why on earth would I do that? Oof. Where is the benefit here? And she wanted me to sit with how uncomfortable I felt doing that. And see that on the other side of it, nothing really changed. Even if I failed, even if I disappointed someone, if I was late to an appointment, nothing happened. And that’s okay.

So it was a big… Process of shifting my perspective as I’ve gone along in life.

So, I then continued. I went on my merry way. I built my business and it was all going, good. [00:05:00] And then life happened, like a tornado, and I had a series of events that occurred very close together that threw everything out of whack. So I, my six week old nephew died. My uncle died. These are people that were so entwined in my life that it had a massive impact.

My six week old nephew dying triggered my niece coming to live with me, it was one, it, there were all these things that had these offshoots and it was like such extreme circumstances . A few years before that, my mom had been hit by a bus, a truck, sorry, a truck, she got hit by a truck and I’m just like, this does not happen in real life, but it does.

So these things compounded and the reality of them was [00:06:00] unbearable and intense. And that became my new baseline. My baseline for existing was to expect that life was going to be that intense, which is a very skewed view. And at the time I had no idea. I had no idea that that’s what I had done or that’s how I was trying to cope with everything.

I was just, I just continued to work, continue to do what I thought needed to be done and tried to process my emotions outside of all of that. To be honest, it was a very bad choice. But I didn’t know at the time. And then I remember having a conversation with one of my clients, who is incredible. She is amazing.

And [00:07:00] she said to me, I need you to realize this. I’m taking things off you. You are so far beyond burnout that you can’t even see it anymore. And it was like I had been smacked in the face. I was devastated. Absolutely gutted. Not because someone has said these mean things about me that’s not what I’m meaning, but it was the reality she was right, and the entire premise of my business and of what I do is to be supportive, to relieve pressure, to help people expand and grow, and I’ve just been told I was doing the opposite, [00:08:00] and that my standard wasn’t my normal standard, I was missing things.

My perception was different. What is going on here? And I couldn’t keep going that way. That was the truth of it. And so I stopped. I lost the majority of my clients. And by lost I mean I said, Okay, we have to slow down. Or when we were coming up to renewal time, I didn’t renew people, like I just scaled way down because I did not want to be the reason my clients didn’t get the support that they needed.

And then I took a pay cut because I’d done that. Fair enough. I cried a lot about everything. There was [00:09:00] a lot of things that I went through and it was a big deal. And then I created a plan so that this would never happen again. I did not want this to tank my reputation, to tank my clients businesses, I did not want this to be an ongoing reality.

And so, I looked at everything. I did a massive overhaul of the way I ran my business. I changed the way I do pricing. I changed the type of people that I now choose to work with. I put personal boundaries in place. So now, even if I’m very driven to just work a little bit later, to just do a little bit more, I have to choose not [00:10:00] to, because then I end up being really tired.

And even though I’m happy to do it at the time, it compounds and then you end up exhausted and then you can’t think as clearly as you would have. So I had to learn some more things about myself and then put boundaries in place to help prevent that snowballing. I got realistic about the time I had available.

What does it actually look like? How much work time do I really have? And how much money do I need to make in that time? Because if my business couldn’t support that, it wasn’t doing what it needed. And I needed to be able to have a business that would pay me what I needed, operating at a high level and a great service.

Then [00:11:00] I changed the way that I work with my team and the things that I hand over and the discussions that I have. I changed the way I communicate with my clients and what I communicate with my clients. And the last thing that I did was got a coach that I very, very much trust. So every time I work with this coach, my business grows.

That’s just the reality of it. And it’s, Because of who they are and how I feel when they’re in my corner and I feel like I can do what I need to do and I feel like I’m being held accountable, but not in a scary way, but it is let’s set some things that are actually achievable that we can do or let’s try this and see what happens.

And, hey people pleaser, it’s okay if it doesn’t work, because it’s all play. [00:12:00] And this point in my life, where it all turned to poo, I really do believe it will be the lowest point that my business has experienced. Like, there was a tornado. It was a living nightmare. And there were a lot of things I needed to change to right the ship.

And I’m so glad that I did them. I’m so glad that I didn’t just give up. I’m so thankful that I have clients that are open and honest with me, and that I was a brave enough person to actually hear what they were saying at that point, even though it was the last thing I wanted to hear. And I’m sharing this with you, because I want you to know that if you’re finding it hard in life, or if you’re building an OBM business and you’re finding that hard, [00:13:00] it’s okay.

And even if the worst things happen, you can always turn it around. I know I did. And I really believe that we need to talk about these things more because I’m fairly certain that some of the things that I changed, some of the things I experienced, just sharing them will help you in your journey. And when somebody else shares theirs with me, it will help me in my journey.

So I wanted to have and take the opportunity to allow you to get to know me a little bit better. A real, true, honest version of me. And that’s all for today’s episode. I hope that it gives you… excitement and confidence or makes you feel nice on the inside because I know that some of those things aren’t very fun to talk about [00:14:00] but I really do hope it’s equipped you with a new way to think about things.

Have a great day everybody. I shall see you next week.

E13 Creating Amazing Client Offboarding Experiences  Goodbye is never goodbye

 [00:00:00] hello. Hello. Welcome to another episode of The Audacious OBM. I’m Leanne Woff. Today, I’m really [00:01:00] excited. We are talking about the final piece for our Creating Amazing Client Experiences series. There’s a lot of S’s there, guys. Okay, so today’s episode is called Creating Amazing Client Offboarding Experiences.

Goodbye is never goodbye. So we are talking about the breakup and we want it to be good right till the very end. So even if you’ve ended on rocky terms, or you thought that the contract was going to go further and it didn’t, or the retainer was going to go on for a longer time, or they were going to renew and they didn’t, we still want it to be a really pleasant ending because you never know what’s going on behind the scenes.

Right. [00:02:00] All right. So I’m going to cover some things that you might not have thought about when looking at your entire offboarding journey. And it’s thinking from, again, the client’s perspective and what they might be thinking and feeling, or information they might need to know, and some things that you can do to pre empt any icky situations.

And I’ll explain a little bit more about that as I go. So the first thing we need to do, which is the same as when we’re looking at offboarding, when we’re looking at delivery, sorry, when we’re looking at onboarding, and when we’re looking at delivery, it’s looking at your process for offboarding at a high level.

So what are the things we need to do process wise? Here are the practical things. Well, I’m, I don’t need access [00:03:00] to your different accounts anymore. I need to do an offboarding call. I need to do a handover call. I need to delete any of your assets from my system. These are all the practical things. And some of them the client is involved in and some aren’t.

But we always start with the tangible pieces. So once you’ve mapped that out, I want you to look at when we need to start communicating in our offboarding journey. So if you know the end of a contract is coming up, at what point do you start talking about what happens next? Look at your system, your process, and work out where that is.

Because then you can create structured communication around it. And I want you to be really specific when you’re thinking about this. What needs to happen? When does it need to happen? When is an appropriate time to start [00:04:00] talking about it? And when we’ve kind of mapped that out, I might know, Okay, I run on quarterly retainers and we’re getting to the end of the quarter.

The client hasn’t told me if they’re going to continue for another quarter. I’ve asked them three times. So now I’m going to assume that they’re not going ahead. So at that point, I send them an email. I say, Hey, it’s been amazing working with you. I know you haven’t responded to me about whether you’ll be continuing or not.

So I’m just going to assume for now that you want to take a break for a while. Here’s what that means. So work out what your cutoff point is, because you need to be able to plan for the future, right?

Then, you work out what offboarding experience looks like for the client. At what point do I tell the client, Alright, we’re coming [00:05:00] to an end. So we need this to be After we know we’re finishing, right? Because if we’re still in the limbo mode of, are they continuing? Aren’t they? We can’t have this kind of conversation.

It just makes it awkward. But once we know for sure the contract isn’t going ahead anymore, it’s not renewing, we start our offboarding. From that minute is when we start offboarding. And I want you to be really specific when you’re communicating with your clients. I want you to be telling them what will happen, when it will happen, the order it will happen in, and what they’re going to need to do.

So again, it’s giving them as much information, relevant information up front as possible. So it might be, a month before we finish up and we start sending an email that just says, Hey! I know that the contract ends in a month, and [00:06:00] I just wanted to give you a heads up that this is how our offboarding process works.

We have a handover call. Then we we have a handover call. Then we remove our access to things. Then we get you to sign off on the project and then, and then, and then. And so when they get that, they already can see, Oh, this is what’s going to happen. When they remove their access, it’s because they’ve met this point.

They’ve already told me that’s going to happen. And what’s not going to happen then is the access gets removed. And all of a sudden your client is thinking, Oh, they’ve removed themselves from everything. Are they stopping right now? Or what’s going on? Purely because you’ve told them. It also gives you the opportunity to book in the things that you need to book in.

So if you’ve explained, we’re going to have a handover call. [00:07:00] You can book in that handover call before your contract is over. Okay, your contract ends in a month. So in about three weeks time, we need to have a handover call. Here are the dates that I have available. Do these work for you? Here’s what happens in a handover call.

So it’s setting up the rest of that process to flow really well to have it be an ongoing conversation where your client is considered and they’re actively participating in it. Then I want you to think about the things that they need to do. So map out on your process. At this point, I need the client to sign off.

This is really important. Otherwise. I might be in trouble legally, or otherwise the accounts will all still be in my name. Like, what are those things that [00:08:00] you’re definitely going to need before closing? And then make sure communicating about them is sprinkled in your offboarding process till they’re done.

We don’t want to miss anything super crucial just because we forgot to talk about it or ask for what we needed. The other thing that you can do is ask your clients what they need from you. Because they’re in this too, they’ve been working with you for how long, so closely. Hey, I know we’re ending soon, I just wanted to see if there was anything else you need from me.

I’ve removed all my access, I’ve sent you the handover, call recording. This is the opportunity I just wanted to check. Because there might be something you haven’t thought of. Oh, I gave you the password for this thing and I don’t know where it is. Or I know you set up this account for me, but I have no idea how to [00:09:00] access it.

Oh, no worries. That’s here, here and here. Not a problem. All of a sudden. That’s a much nicer experience than it is a, Alright, we’ve done handover, it was lovely working with you, goodbye. The next thing is the consideration of when things happen in terms of it’s final, removing access, deleting data, what are your data storage

protocols?, because it’s important and I know as part of my process, I tell my clients how long I keep their assets for and at what point I’ll be deleting them off my servers. So they need to make sure they keep their own copies and I remind them about that. In offboarding, because that would be awful, right?

To lose all of your stuff because you thought that your supplier had it and your supplier had already deleted it. [00:10:00] So let’s give them the opportunity to get what they need. We also need to discuss access and what can be removed at different stages because sometimes you might need access to some things and other things you can get rid of sooner, other things you might need to keep on a little bit longer, you might be moving to a different kind of service, maybe a lower retainer where you don’t need access to so much anymore.

And so just be really clear about when you’re removing access. Why you’re removing it, and if it’s that the client has to remove your access, you want to remind them to do that too.

Then let’s look at, this has been a great working experience. We have put in a lot of time and effort into building a relationship with this client. And as is pretty standard, we want to ask for a testimonial and it can [00:11:00] be a little bit awkward to ask for testimonials, but if you build it into your process, it won’t be and it can be really casual.

“Hey, I really loved working with you and I hope that you’ve enjoyed the experience too. Would you be willing to give me a testimonial?” And you can give them links and instructions to make it really easy. You can say to them, I’ll only present the message, I won’t put your name. Or you can say, “I’m going to use your name and your photo and put it on my marketing.

Is that okay?” So you’ve got to work out where in the offboarding that that is best placed. Then you also might want to be asking for referrals. Hey, you’ve told me this is amazing. If there’s anybody else in your sphere that you think might benefit from my services or need me in their world, could you please let me know or could you send them my way?

Then, [00:12:00] I want you to make a note to get back in touch with that person. This is not a flows and runs situation. You’ve built… This relationship with this person, and it’s been awesome. You don’t have to stop talking to them. You don’t have to pretend they don’t exist. You want to keep that relationship.

So make a note to circle back to say, how are you going? To say, Hey, do you need my services anymore? And be social. Jump online, connect with them. It can still be very professional and from a professional manner, but we’re human beings. And just because we’re not going to work with each other anymore, or just because you don’t need my services right now, or can’t afford them, or whatever the reason is, It doesn’t mean you can’t keep that connection, these relationships are still very important.

And so, I think it’s important for us to factor it into our process, because [00:13:00] we are very process driven. The more that we do that, the more our clients feel like we’ve invested, we’ve actually committed, we actually care about them, about their business, and it filters all the way through. So even though we’re not working with them anymore, they’re still going to remember the way they felt working with you, and the fact that you still care, and when they need something else, they’re coming back to you.

Or when their friends need something, their business friends or colleagues or, you know, suppliers, when they need something, they’re going to think of you because you’ve really built in that human element right up to the very, very end, which really isn’t the end. Goodbye is never goodbye.

Always assume it’s goodbye for now [00:14:00] in this capacity. So we’ve come to the end of our creating amazing client experiences. This is something that I walk all the students in OBM Academy through. It’s one of my nine crucial steps in my six figure OBM roadmap because I believe it is so important. And I hope across the last four episodes.

I’ve given you a really solid foundation of how you can create these experiences and the benefit of doing it. I would really love it if you could let me know if you’ve tried any of these things. I always like to see the different techniques OBMs are trying or things they’re adding in to their processes to expand that experience.

It’s really exciting. It’s fun. So yeah, get [00:15:00] in touch. You can send me a DM, send me an email, however you wish. I will speak to you next week. Thanks everybody.