[00:00:00] Kristy: A few weeks ago, I put up a post on Instagram where I was talking about how capacity fluctuates. Sometimes you've got all the capacity in the world and sometimes you just, well, don't. So the question I'm addressing in this conversation is how to stay consistent when times are hard, whether that's you are going through a lot in your personal life or things are pretty hectic with your business, or maybe your mindset is a little bit shaky because if I'm honest, you don't always have the capacity to be on across all areas of your business.

[00:00:43] So if this is something that you are feeling frustrated about or perhaps you're feeling a little guilty, then this conversation is for you. Are you ready? Let's go. Hello boss and welcome back to the Run Your Business Like a Boss podcast. Am I doing enough? I'm not consistent enough.

[00:01:41] What do I do when I don't have the bandwidth or capacity to show up in the way that I've always done or I would like to. This is what we are talking about in this conversation and I understand that you have a lot of expectations and shoulds on your shoulders as a business owner, and I talk a lot about that here on the podcast.

[00:02:06] There's a lot of demands placed on business owners, and one of those demands that we talk about a lot is consistency. so I wanted to explore this topic a little bit further in this conversation and share what my thoughts are on the matter. Before we dive in, I mentioned on last week's episode that I am now offering 90 minute business coaching strategy intensives.

[00:02:29] If you want my eyes and my support with your business, this is a really great way to get started with me, especially if you are not necessarily keen for ongoing coaching. So if you're feeling stuck and you are unsure of what that next step is in your business, then I invite you to head down into the show notes, grab the link, and apply today.

[00:02:50] Okay, so onto today's conversation, which of course is about consistency. So in the context of consistency and what I'm going to be referring to today, I'm talking about showing up online, working towards your goals and client work.

[00:03:06] These are the three main areas that are a sticking point for many business owners. Consistency is really important, right? But I wanna be really clear on what I'm talking about when I say consistency. I think when we say consistency, we often think that we are referring to frequency.

[00:03:25] The definition of consistency is acting or done in the same way over time, especially so as to be fair and accurate. This isn't about volume. This isn't about how much you're doing. It's about doing the same thing over and over again.

[00:03:41] So, as an example, you can be consistent on social media without posting every single day. You can work towards your goals without needing to do something towards your goals every single day. you get my drift. So as an example, particularly when it comes to social media, we often think, or we're really told that you need to show up frequently on social media, and that's kind of positioned in this way of being consistent, whereas you can be posting one or two times a week, and if you're consistently doing that and that's what works for your business, That is more than enough.

[00:04:19] You don't need to be prescribing to someone else's volume. So to be clear, what we're talking about in this conversation is about consistency and not about volume. So I'm gonna dive into five things that I think will help you to be more consistent across your business. The first one is setting habits and systems.

[00:04:41] James Clear talks about this in his book, atomic Habits, the Power of Habits Stacking. I feel like most of you would have read this book, but if you haven't, I definitely encourage you to grab a copy, and to, yeah, look at, read that book. It's something that you can read in sections. You don't have to read it from start to finish in the one hit, but it is a really awesome book that comes to changing your behavior to lead to a new result.

[00:05:10] And habit stacking is essentially, starting with one thing and then that always turns into the next thing, and then that turns into the next thing, and then the next thing And so forth and so on, and it's really just about creating like this kind of pattern of behaviour that helps you to stay on task.

[00:05:28] And I like to use habit stacking in conjunction with having solid systems in place for taking action. I have systems and processes for working on my business and creating content and for client work. And what this does is it takes out the need for me to have to think about all the things each time I'm taking action.

[00:05:50] and what that means is I've already got the tasks laid out for me, and so it makes it harder for me to procrastinate because it's such an easy thing to get started, and you really just need to start taking that first step because the first step leads to the next step and so forth and so on.

[00:06:04] As I said, So here's an example of how this might work in your business for social media. For example, we'll go with the two posts a week example. You wanna create two posts a week, and you have a clear set of processes that you wanna create. Maybe one's a reel and one is a carousel. And so you have a method for which you're creating your post. It might be that you begin with your caption, and so you write the two captions at the same time, and then from there you record a reel and then you jump into Canva and create the carousel to go with the second post.

[00:06:42] And if you do that all in one hit, and it's just the same thing that you do week in, week out, that makes it so much easier to stay consistent across your business. How this works for me, I'm gonna use the podcast as an example.

[00:06:56] So the first thing that I do is I have a list of topics that I wanna cover, and that list is extremely extensive. Then I think about what I want to cover over the month ahead so that's all done for me. That's the system that I set up so that I don't have to be trying to figure out what I want to create.

[00:07:16] Now, what I will say is that I do allow for creative freedom so if I think that something needs to come out and something else needs to go, I allow for that to happen. I don't stick rigidly to my topic plan, and then every week I will record a podcast. I might even do two in a week depending on what's going on.

[00:07:35] And so from my topic, I will then obviously create a loose plan for what it is that I'm going to cover. And then from there I will hit record, and then it goes off to the production manager who does all of the backend of the process. It comes back to me from the show notes I create the email that I send out to my email list.

[00:07:57] From the email I create my social post, and it's just this really clear step by step process that I just do every single week, and that's what allows me to stay consistent with this. And by having that process, it means that I don't have to think about all the things that I need to do that can go into creating a podcast.

[00:08:21] It's just this set of processes that I am executing week on week.

[00:08:25] Now how that might look when it comes to working towards your goals. Again, sometimes what can happen is we get so caught up on doing client work and being busy working in our business, that we don't create time to work on our business. So a really great way to remain consistent on working on your business and taking action on the goals that you've set for yourself is to set aside a regular time each and every week to work on your business.

[00:08:55] So you might call this a CEO day. You might call this your business day, whatever you wanna call this. This is a day or a half day that you spend working on your business each and every week, and having a plan ahead of time. So, With my clients, we set the plan on a page every quarter. There's a clear set of goals that are in place as well as the action steps that are required.

[00:09:18] So when you have a plan, it's then simply about what are you gonna work on in that time slot, as opposed to trying to figure out each and every week, or what am I gonna do here?

[00:09:27] And how does that work? For this, you've already done the thinking and the planning and creating the system on the outset so that when it comes time to taking action, that really is just about doing the things that you have allocated for yourself. I think it's so much harder to make time to work on your business when you don't have a plan and when you are not really clear on what the steps are to take, because then what you're doing is you're creating time as well as figuring out the steps that you wanna take in your business, and It's those two together that may require more capacity, which will perhaps hold you back from being consistent and taking action in your business. The second thing to help you to remain consistent is to outsource. If you are struggling with time or capacity, then it might be time to think about outsourcing components of your business that you are really struggling with now.

[00:10:18] This can be a really tricky thing for business owners, especially ambitious business owners just like you, who are really capable of doing a lot of different things in their business. And I think that we fall into this trap of thinking, okay, well I'll outsource that because I'm not very good at it, but we hold onto the things that we are good and that can easily become a bottleneck in your business.

[00:10:41] And you may not be as consistent as what you would like to be in your business because you are reluctant to hand that over to somebody else. So when it comes to outsourcing, I really encourage you to not only look at the things that are not in your zone of genius, that's absolutely something to consider, but also think about the things that you are not being able to deliver on because you just don't have the capacity.

[00:11:06] So let's take, for example, in my business, I've always been pretty good at social media. I don't find social media hard at all, but last year I found that I had less and less capacity when it came to creating social media posts. So I was redirecting a lot of my content energy here onto the podcast because this is my main piece of content in a week and then I just found that I just didn't have the energy to show up on socials beyond the content that I was creating here on the podcast, and that just didn't feel right for my business.

[00:11:39] I knew that I wanted to increase the volume and be showing up online a little bit more than what I was, so I could have chosen two things in order to be more consistent and to also post more. I could have made more time to do it in my business, or I could have chosen to outsource, which is what I did. So late last year, I hired a social media manager to help me with creating more posts on my socials.

[00:12:08] I'm still very much involved in the creative process, but I'm not needing to do all the things right? So if you are really struggling to be consistent and show up in the ways that you want to, or maybe it's that you are really struggling to be consistent with your client work and there's components within the client work that are falling behind that maybe you need to outsource and get someone in to support you with that so that you're delivering your client work in a more timely manner, investing in outsourcing may be the answer that you are looking for.

[00:12:39] The third thing that I encourage you to do if you're struggling with consistency is to ask yourself the question for what is the purpose? Do you know why you are doing the things that you are doing in your business? Do you know why it's important to be consistent? I think we can get really caught up in checking boxes and maybe systems can also be a bit of a downside in this respect, is that we're just like, you know, moving through the components and not really deeply connecting to the work that we are doing, and we lose sight of why we're doing the things that we're doing. So I wanna pull out the example with client work for this particular point.

[00:13:17] So let's say that you're struggling with client deliverables and you just procrastinate on it and you just struggle to get started.

[00:13:25] You struggle to be consistent week on week on what you need to be doing for your clients. It might be that you need to take a step back and really think about what does this mean for my clients? What is the purpose of me doing this work for my client? What is made possible for my client through what I'm delivering to them?

[00:13:46] And create deeper meaning around the work that you're doing. We can get really caught up on being task focused, and when you're too task focused, you are not really thinking about the impact that you are creating through your work. And this is when you can start to procrastinate and spin your wheels on the things that you need to deliver.

[00:14:05] Maybe you're feeling a little bit bored and you need to be refreshed or reminded of how important it is, the work that you are doing, and how much you want to create a transformational outcome for your clients. So, If you're struggling to be consistent, or if you're finding yourself procrastinating on work that you are doing for your clients or in your business, then ask yourself for what is this purpose?

[00:14:28] You can also apply this for your goals. A lot of people get sidetracked on, you know, needing to do all of the things and overwhelmed by, you know, getting started or struggling to show up in a way that they wanna show up for their goals or on social media. taking a step back and really thinking about what is the purpose of this will help you to have deeper clarity and create meaning behind the work that you are doing.

[00:14:54] Another thing I wanted to mention when it comes to your goals, and I've spoken about this on the podcast before, is attaching an intrinsic meaning and an extrinsic meaning to what happens when you achieve your goals. Very easy to set goals and not work towards them. But if you create purpose and meaning behind what happens when you achieve those goals and why you are working towards those goals, so what it means for you internally and what you get as a result of those goals, it can help you to dig in and move past any procrastination or fear or, you know, just letting your work take over rather than, you know, working on the things that you wanna be working on in your business.

[00:15:39] And my last point on this one is when it comes to social media, think about what is your purpose for socials? are you using socials to drive traffic to your offers, or are you building relationships with your clients? Are you wanting to be visible? Are you bolstering your thought leadership? So being really clear on what is the purpose of your socials will really help you to take action on doing the things rather than feeling obligated to be consistent online.

[00:16:15] We are getting close. Now we're up to number four, which is accountability. Now again, at the start of the episode, I spoke about capacity fluctuating, and I think it's really easy for us to focus on low-hanging fruit or activities that are easy in our business or things that are more enjoyable and put on the back burner things that are either hard or less enjoyable or more mundane, and this is where having accountability built into your business is really powerful. Now, accountability comes in different ways. It can come in. Let's say a family member, perhaps maybe you've set a revenue target in your business and that's something that you and your partner have agreed on and you know where that money is going, and maybe you wanna feedback to them what you are doing to reach that, uh, revenue target, for instance.

[00:17:10] Or maybe it can be that it's really important for you. Okay, I'm gonna use the podcast as an example. What I have found is by hiring our podcast manager, it is a form of accountability for me. So I'm on a subscription where I have a weekly episode that's included in the package that I have with Bamby Media, and by having that it's got inbuilt accountability. So I know the days that I am due to have my podcast to them, I try and get it to them before then. I know when it's due. I know I have to do it every single week, and that other people are accounting on me to do this thing so that they can do their next component in the process.

[00:17:55] So that is a form of accountability to producing content every single week by outsourcing, or maybe it's that you have a coach. This is what Beck Buchanan spoke about on the 100th episode. She spoke about how, I'm not her accountability coach, but by having this fortnightly touchpoint with me, she's always thinking about, what is it that I'm gonna share with Kristy?

[00:18:20] What am I gonna bring to the table? What am I, what have I done to move my business forward? And it's what keeps her continuing to go from strength to strength in her business because she's got that fortnightly appointment in her calendar to really talk about her business and to see where she's moving the needle towards her goals and so forth.

[00:18:40] So accountability can be really powerful, especially when you are juggling so many facets in your business. To have that built in accountability for the things that you wanna be consistent on is absolutely imperative.

[00:18:54] Now the fifth thing I will say about being consistent is to keep it simple. I feel like this is my war cry. Keep it simple. Keep it simple. you know, I really love keeping everything in my business simple and when I do that, it means that I can show up for the things that are really important, I don't have things in my business that I do that drain me and that are not relevant to do.

[00:19:19] And what that means is that I can have the capacity to deliver on all the things that I need to deliver on because I'm not doing things in my business that are, as I said, are relevant. So really thinking about how can you make your processes simple? How can you, uh, make it so that it's really easy for you to take action on consistently the things that you want to take action on.

[00:19:42] So whether that is socials, whether that is working on your goals, Whether that is working in your business, and I work with my clients to set up their calendars so that they, so that things are easy and that they're not needing to fill up their days with heaps and heaps of different tasks so that they have no time to deliver on the things that are important in their business.

[00:20:02] Keeping things simple is completely underrated, and I think that. Amazing at over complicating things. And when we overcomplicate things, that's when, where we fail to meet the deadlines that we wanna meet, or that we don't take action on the things that are actually important in our business.

[00:20:21] So I encourage you to look at your social media. How can you make the process of creating content simple? How can you be consistent without putting too much pressure on yourself? Look at your goals. Do you have too many goals that you are working on in a quarter? Do you have too much on your play in a day that you are wanting to achieve and therefore you are not able to reach those goals because you are over subscribing on your day?

[00:20:51] When it comes to your client work, just like what I spoke about in last week's episode, do you have too many steps in your processes that are really not necessary and that's creating more work and more demands on your time and energy? So really think about how can you make things across your business simple so that you can work on the things that are really important in your business.

[00:21:14] So there you have it. I have shared five fantastic ways to be more consistent in your business. What are you gonna do? Like you've got so many great tools and tips and things that you could take action on. I'm curious to know what it is that you are going to put in place so that you can be more consistent across the important areas in your business.

[00:21:38] I'd love to hear from you. Feel free to shoot me across at DM, either on LinkedIn or on Instagram, or feel free to share this out on your socials. Take a photo and tell me what it is that you're gonna put in place. I'd love to hear from you. Boss, as always, I appreciate your time. I love being here with you.

[00:21:57] I really do hope this episode supported you. Thank you so much for listening and as always, I look forward to chatting with you next week.