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3 Lessons from building that apply to business



I am currently doing a renovation and I love a good analogy, so for this episode, I thought I’d do something a little bit fun and do an episode of lessons learned in building and renovating that also apply to business! I suspect that hidden inside this episode, you're gonna find plenty of golden nuggets.


The key lessons we explore:


1. Vision. In building, when we first started planning our home we had a huge seven-bedroom house with an indoor fireplace and all the bells and whistles. We fell in love with that plan. But now in retrospect, it doesn't actually align with our values or vision. Our life vision is more aligned with simple living, minimalism and a sustainable lifestyle. Having a big home just didn’t align with that vision or value system for us.


And the same goes for your business. Unless you know where you're taking your business long-term, it's going to be really easy to be distracted and get carried away with taking action and doing things that don't align with your vision. So it’s key, whether you're building a house or whether you're building a business, to know where you're going and what is important to you.


2. Investing in the right team and support. This is so important when you're renovating unless of course, you're the kind of person who loves to DIY. Spoiler alert, I'm not that person! Investing in really good people helps you bring your vision to life. Not only that, you want the right people, who get your vision and understand what you’re trying to achieve.


The big takeaway here is, do you want to learn how to do that thing? Or is your time better spent in your zone of genius, and outsourcing that thing to the experts? I share the aspects of my business that I outsource, and how doing that has been instrumental to both growth and sustainability of my business.


3. It's a season, and it won't last forever, but definitely worth it. For us building, it hasn’t been easy. It’s required a lot of time, with many decisions and has been very intense. Similarly in your business, you will have intense periods where you're making a lot of decisions and working really hard. But it’s important to remember that these intense periods shouldn't be lasting for sustained periods of time. So whilst it's a season, remember, it won't last forever, but it is absolutely worth it!


I know you’ll enjoy this relaxed, fun take unpacking business and all the helpful analogies that have been emerging for me while we renovate. Dive in for all the gold.

Topics We Covered:

00:00

You know, I love a good analogy. For a while now, I've been using a lot of building analogies to reinforce my topics and conversations here on the podcast. And the reason for that is because a) I love a good analogy, and b), I am doing a renovation. So I thought, hey, why not do something a little bit fun and do an episode of lessons learned in building and renovating that also apply to business? Sometimes we don't need to listen to a big war and peace episode to get a good takeaway or Aha. And I suspect that hidden inside this episode, you're gonna find plenty of golden nuggets. Are you ready? Let's go.


00:53

You're listening to the Run Your Business Like a Boss podcast. Hello, and welcome. I'm Kristy Robinson, your host I'm here to advocate for you the business owner who is knee-deep in the messy middle. If you're tired of feeling stretched, overworked and overwhelmed, you're in the right place. My goal is to help you streamline systemize and create a strategy that enables you to step from stressed-out worker to the boss of your business. Now let's dive into today's episode.


1:23

Hello, boss, and welcome back to the Run Your Business Like a Boss podcast. Thanks for joining me for this kind of fun, and special conversation. Before I dive into the episode itself, I wanted to share with you how we can work together in 2023. If you're thinking about hiring a coach, and more specifically, if you're thinking about working with me, I thought I would unpack my two main coaching programs. The first one is to Run Your Business like a Boss Academy. This is my small group coaching program that runs for 16 weeks. And it's been designed to help you to reconfigure and transform your business for the next level of growth or this next season of growth. It is a guided program. So we start off with where you're at. And we move through each of the modules to help you to really lay the foundations for your business. So the things that we cover in this program is designing your business about bedrock. So you've heard me speaking about this on the podcast, we're going to look at creating a succinct vision mission and value statement that really do mean something for you.


In this next chapter of your business, we're going to look at your niche and get you thinking about who is that person that you're going to be working with moving forward, taking into account all of the insights that you've gleaned over the first few years in business. The next module is to understand what makes you unique. And this is such a powerful module when you sit in your strength when you sit in what makes you unique and your story. It allows you to step into this next season and to really elevate your position in the business. But also your positioning out there when you're talking about your marketing and going for those bigger goals. Module number five is to simplify your service suite. I've made no secret of my love of simplicity and ease. So we're going to strip everything back and really designed this next-level service suite that aligns to not only your business goals, but also your personal goals and how that creates transformational outcome for your ideal client.


We're going to craft your client journey. So looking at what client experience you want to create, and then creating a client journey that aligns to that, followed by module seven, which is to optimize your offers, we're going to be looking at your service delivery, what support you need to have in place to be able to power up that client experience. And we're going to wrap it all up with my unique goal-setting and strategic planning process which once you learn how to do this, you will be able to roll that out quarter after quarter after quarter. This program has been run for two cohorts this year cohort number three opens in February of 2023. So if you're keen to learn more about this program, then I encourage you to join the waitlist, the link is down in the show notes. Check out the website read more about the program. And of course, if you want to get in touch with me, please send me a message and we can tee up a time to chat.


The next program that I wanted to talk about is my signature private coaching program, which is the business accelerator coaching program. This is a six-month container that has been designed to help you scale your time and business. So I understand what it's like to be a business owner to have all the ideas and feel overwhelmed by all the things that you need to do. And you need that dedicated one on one personalized support. That's what this program is all about. You will have me to support you through your own transformation and what you're looking to achieve over the two quarters that we work together this program's aim is not only transformational for your business, but I truly believe for you personally, if you do want to know more about this program, head over to the website, the link is in the show notes, I do have a detailed overview of this container on the website, and now is definitely the time to apply.


So with all of that said, let's dive into the few things that I learned in renovating or building that apply to business. So as you know, I've been or maybe you don't, I've been renovating for the good part of probably about six months now in different forms. However, this journey did not start in 2022. This journey actually started when we purchased our house in 2017. We've been planning and mapping and ideating and doing all the things for many years before we did anything to the house whatsoever. So to be at this point where we are nearly done with our renovations, we're gonna have to do a few things at a later date, but the bulk of the renovations will be finished by Christmas, or maybe even a little bit earlier. I've been thinking a lot about this experience. And I love using building analogies anyway. And I thought why not go through and just pluck out three things that I've learned through building that apply to business.


So the first one is to know your vision. I talk a lot about this on the podcast that unless you know where you're taking your business long term, it's going to be really easy to be distracted by all the things and get carried away with taking action and doing things that don't really align to that vision.


So how this looks when you're renovating is that it's so easy when you're working with your partners. So whether that's an architect or whoever, and they take you in a direction that they think would work for you. But actually, it doesn't. So when we first started planning our home, we plan to like this huge seven bedroom house with a void and an indoor outdoor fireplace and all of the bells and whistles, right? We fell in love with that plan and the idea of that plan. But now in retrospect, it doesn't actually align with our vision of our life, right? We want to stay in this house forevermore, we want to be able to enjoy this house until we absolutely can't live here anymore. And by being on one level, and by having a significantly smaller house means that I'll have less things to clean and manage and all of the things and we live in Queensland.


So we decided that our vision for our life was more of that simple living, I'm listening to a lot of minimalism podcasts, and really embracing minimalism, I don't have a lot of clothes. We love a sustainable lifestyle, we've got an electric car, and we've got solar on the roof. And eventually, we wanted to be somewhat self-sustainable. And having a big home didn't really align with that vision and that value system for us. So it really is so important whether you're building a house or whether you're building a business, that you need to know where you're going, what is important to you. So that is so integral. And I really think that going through this building process has reinforced what that means in business as well.


The second one is to invest in the right team and support. Okay, so this is a biggie when you're renovating, unless you're that kind of person who loves to do it all yourself. And spoiler alert, I'm not that person. I can get overwhelmed really easy by all the things and I don't know how to do DIY, and I have learned how to do a lot of things in my life. But I don't really have an interest in learning how to do DIY. So there will be things that we need to do ourselves 100% We will be doing that to save costs and whatever. And it's just, you know, it's just what's practical. But for the most part, I have built an incredible team. I say I actually mean my husband and I when I say AI so it's not just me that's doing and in fact, he's done the heavy lifting in all of this. So a shout out to him. But we have invested in the right team to help us with every step of the journey, whether it's been from the landscapers that have done all of the construction work outside to our carpenter who did all of their work inside to our designer, she did the original designs for inside of the house, but she's also going to do our kitchen redo our design for our kitchen because we made a change. So she's going to do that through to certifiers and engineers and now we've got our outdoor designer who's helping us to curate what the look and feel is and tying all of that all together. So we've invested in getting really good people and really good trades to bring this vision to life. So it was important to us, we didn't invest in the bottom of the market far from it, in fact, because I really wanted the right people who got our vision that understood what we were trying to achieve.


Because what a lot of people do with a sort of similar style house to us is they go down this direction of a very Hamptons look. And we really didn't want that that is not our personal aesthetic. And so we knew that we needed to have people you know, in our support team that understood, you know, that we're a bit more rustic and earthy, and you know, we like things done a certain way. So having the right people to help me with that is so important.


So the takeaway from a business perspective, is that DIY or outsource. If it's not, in your best interest to learn that skill, to master that skill, then is it really necessary for you to do that? And should you then outsource that, that's how I looked at a lot of our decisions in the build. But it's also how I look at a lot of the decisions in my business. So for instance, one of the first things that I did was outsource all of my financials, like my bookkeeping, and accounting, and all of those sorts of things, and does, I absolutely have my fingers all over it, and I'm watching and I'm downloading reports, and I'm keeping my finger on the pulse. But I love that bigger lens, that more strategic lens on my numbers, I don't want to be doing the doing, because I'm not very good at that. And it's not my zone of genius. So I outsource that I also outsource my podcasts, I did that from the get-go. Because whilst I could do it, I can't do it as good as what Bamby Media does it. And I felt like it wasn't a good use of my time to invest in learning how to do it.


Now, here's something that I have done and mastered all along the way that I have now decided to outsource. So what this might look like in building is that you know how to paint, right, but then you get to a point in the journey where someone paints better than you, A and B, it takes so much time to paint, right. So the new thing in my business, as I'm finishing up 2022 is outsourcing my social media. If you follow me on Instagram, you'll notice that I've spent less time on posting on my grid this year, because I've been very, very focused on the podcast, and I only have so many hours in the day and, and so forth. So I've actually made the decision to get support with helping to turn my podcast episodes into things that are consumable and easy to process over on Instagram moving forward. So that's been a, you know, a shift and change. And so you can see how that relates to building as well.


So investing in the right team and support when you're building is essential, right? Because you don't want things to break. You don't want things to be so off course, you want people who get you, you want people who are experts at what they do. It's exactly the same in business. But the big takeaway here is, do you want to learn how to do that thing? Or is your time better spent in your zone of genius, and outsource that to the experts.


And the final thing that I want to unpack in my lessons in building that transfer over into business is it's a season, and it won't last forever, but it's sure as heck is worth it. Right. So I spoke about seasons in last week's episode in the sense of self-trust. But seasons are always something that will come and go in our life and our relationships in our business. And for us building. It's not easy. There are a lot of decisions that need to happen. And sometimes those decisions can be very, very permanent and costly. And you know, you're trying to figure out, okay, what is this pool interior look like? And then how does that fit in with the tiles? And then how does that fit in with the pool cabana? And then how does that fit in with the overall, you know, aesthetic of the back garden, right, it's like, so every little micro decision that you're making in a build, it has a knock on effect or impact or implication for other things that you're doing, right.


And it's the same in business, that you're often making decisions about what you're doing, you know, let's say you're gonna start a podcast, like that's going to have impact for you in other parts of your business. What that might look like is that you need, you know, half a day or a day, every week or fortnight to allocate to your podcasts that you could potentially put elsewhere. But then the impact of that will be that you get to build a relationship, create impact, and that might in turn, you know, be a great source of leads and whatnot, or that might introduce speaking engagements or whatever that might look like for you, right.


So how does this all relate to seasons? This level of intensity of making decisions, it's not going to last forever, and even though when you're in the thick of it, whether it be in the middle of a renovation or building or in your business, this has peaks and troughs. In building, it should drop off altogether at the end. But in your business, you will have intense periods where you're making a lot of decisions, you'll have intense periods where you're working really hard. And that's what building has been. For us. It's been a very intense period of time where it's taken a lot of our personal time and our personal focus. And so thinking about this in your business and knowing that intense periods shouldn't be lasting for sustained periods of time. So whilst it's a season, remember, it won't last forever, but it sure as heck is worth it.


It was a roundabout way to get to the end of this one. But there's so much nuance involved in this season of building and maybe this season of messiness, or growth or difficulty or building or wherever it's at for you and your business.


So I hope you enjoyed this relaxed, fun take of unpacking business and building and the analogies that came from this experience for me, I hope you have a golden nugget that you can latch on to and think about and unpack in your own time. As always, I appreciate you joining me for these conversations. And do remember, if you are thinking about working together in 2023, head down into the show notes to grab those links join the waitlist either for the academy or apply today for the business accelerator coaching program. Boss, I appreciate you, you take care. Thanks again and I look forward to chatting with you next week.


16:34

Thank you so much for joining me. If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider leaving a review and if you're not already doing so connect with me over on Instagram. My handle is @kristyrobinson_consulting and listen up. If you're keen to learn more about how I can support you to run your business like a boss, check out the website kristyrobinson.com.au Thanks again and I look forward to chatting with you next time.

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About your host, Kristy
 

Hi, I'm Kristy, thank you for tuning in to the Run Your Business Like a Boss Podcast. My purpose for the podcast is to help Business Owner’s in the growth stage of business (messy middle) have a sustainable business, they love.

 

I’m an online business coach, based in Brisbane, Australia. I provide 1:1 business coaching, to Service Based Online Business Owner's and a group coaching program commencing in 2022. I believe whole heartedly that having a Business Coach is what gives you the competitive edge. As your coach I support you to overcome challenges quickly, uncover blindspots and make business decisions with confidence and clarity. All of which keeps you moving forward and maintaining momentum. 

As your Business Coach, my role is to help you organise and formulate your ideas, turn them into a goal and then into an actionable plan! All while meeting you where you're at and providing you relevant tools and support along the way.

 

Thank you for tuning in to the Run Your Business Like A Boss podcast!

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