Today is special! It’s one year since we launched the Leveraged Business Podcast WOOHOO! 52 weeks of content about creating leverage in your business and achieving true freedom working smarter not harder.
As we celebrate the show’s one year anniversary, I’m reflecting on the whole journey so far – from how I got started to how it’s going so far.
I share how success metrics can either bring us joy or torture us, and how growth happens when we lean into our passion and expertise, when we’re consistent, and when we don’t give up when things get tough, and we keep on doing it.
Join me in either audio or reading this transcript, as I talk about the show, what matters in mindset, marketing and money terms – and some clues about what next for the podcast, leveraged business acceleration, and the world of iSuccess!
Spoiler alert – I have a big announcement.
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Hello everyone, and a very very warm welcome to you. Today is special. It’s the one-year anniversary of the Leveraged Business Podcast WOOHOO! 52 episodes of content about creating leverage in your business and achieving true freedom working smarter not harder.
Given how when I started planning to launch a podcast, we were in the middle of the covid19 pandemic with most countries in lockdown, I started this whole journey focused on recording audio mostly to publish the audiobook edition of my book Leveraged Consulting in the Digital Age.
Who’d have known the whole world was going to be forced into more digital transformation in the space of a year than in the ten years’ previous! For businesses, it was do or die.
And truth be said, that’s probably how a lot of people were feeling individually too, without social distancing and not going out and about, more of us learned to do everyday things online rather than in-person.
My whole career has focused on digital transformation, and e-learning and internet marketing, especially on the content side. And I shared a lot of those digital shifts in my New Year’s Day episode, which was a webinar-podcast hybrid – it was episode 15 – and that feels sooooo long ago now! This year has been pretty unsettled too, for sure, but it’s way easier to start making plans now.
My son has just booked a whole itinerary and flights for a trip to South Africa and Botswana. It’s been a long time coming, and so great for him. He’s 25 and it’s felt like his whole life, socially and professionally has been on standby for a year and a half, bless him.
I’m sure many of us feel that way too. So now we can plan, now it’s time to set new goals, and to have things take off. And I have a big announcement on that score too, which I’ll talk about a bit later on.
With all the success of big names with big numbers that we see in the media, in the days of social influencing mavericks, and seeing TV personalities turn into business brands online, we can sometimes feel insecure about our own contribution. So my share today is a reminder that who you are and the value you bring to each individual you touch with your content and support is way more important than all these social proofs and playing the numbers game.
Once Upon a Podcast
Let me go back to very beginning, how the Leveraged Business podcast all started, humour me. It’s a decent story…
Once upon a time, there was an entrepreneur and her name was Jacqueline – Jay that’s me. She was a happy consultant who’d done some good things in her time helping people to improve their teaching, their students’ learning, their communications, their services, their marketing and their digital transformation …
She has a good family, lovely friends and a lot of great clients. She’d had her ups and downs, and things were bumping along pretty well.
A little too well, since now she was kind of semi-retired, and she had time on her hands. And she started to ask herself, what can I do that will really make a difference, how can I share my expertise more widely and become more visible?
Anyway – that was me and… one day, it was back in April last year, April 2020. I decided to do one of those Facebook challenges I happened to see, all about starting a podcast.
And I did it at that point out of curiosity because I was thinking of doing an audio edition of my book, and I thought I could see what it’s all about, and pick up some tips about recording, and maybe equipment and audio editing.
The challenge was really good. I got the whole concept for a podcast mapped out, and then after I recorded my audiobook, I started writing and recording the intro, outro, the trailer.
And I still hadn’t fully decided if I would launch a podcast, if I wanted to commit to doing it. Then I planned a couple of launch episodes and approached someone in the podcast membership for a guest interview … and it really wasn’t until that point that I thought gosh, I can actually do this. And once I’d done the guest interview, I felt committed.
That person had given up time to do it, so I had to launch, didn’t I. Plus it felt really good, and all very aligned with everything else I’d done around the leveraged business theme.
I went ahead and planned the whole launch, rallied my launch team and we launched it. And in a few weeks, we were in the charts! Not the number one spot, but close enough to feel it was a success. And within a couple of months, we were in the Top 10% global ranking.
So I kept going. I got my workflow all mapped out, as you’d expect, I’m a process girl – and then outsourced more and more of it.
And that’s my whole journey, and I laid it all out in a series of three episodes on the power of podcasting that I did in June this year: episodes 33, 34 and 35. And I must have loved it, since I’ve stuck it out for an entire year!
I’m recording this episode in October 2021, and when this episode comes out, we’ll have passed the one-year mark of the Leveraged Business podcast being live.
About halfway in, or maybe a bit more, around June, I did a three-part series about the power of podcasting. And I talked about the process of planning and making a podcast, I shared about the launch process too.
Episode highlights
We kicked off with our launch on 28th October 2020 – and what a year that was eh?
But pandemic trend gossip was leaning more and more towards the shifts people were making in their lives, what they were spending their time doing, now that we were locked out of the usual social life norms. People were turning to audiobooks and podcasts in record breaking numbers.
After I hit the publish button on my audiobook late October, because of the backlog, it took Amazon two months to review it and go live.
In the meantime, we launched with a little ol’ trailer and two episodes about the whole premise of leverage in business, working smarter not harder, and the pursuit of true freedom that having a business should be able to achieve for you.
My first guest Andy Lopata, who I never would have met if it weren’t for podcasting, was just awesome and such a gracious guy to interview. Given that was my very first interview and he’s a very experienced speaker himself, it gave me such a lift he appreciated my research and that I’d read his book. It’s so much better to interview someone who’s work you do know and appreciate.
It’s one reason I haven’t taken up any of the tens of offers of guests from agents since the podcast started getting noticed. I much prefer to cherry pick people from my own spheres of influence and networks. I’ve got to know some amazing people much better too, just from the whole process of getting them on the show.
In the first few months of creating content, I was dotting around all over the landscape of creating leverage, from business planning to sales conversations, how to bring greater effectiveness to your work.
Given the podcast sits under the iSuccess umbrella, we talked a lot about success throughout, what that means to each of us as individuals. And my 007 guest Tara Chatzakis gave us some lovely insights into how we can leverage our inner happiness, create an attitude of gratitude and tap into our positive energy channels.
Because those are the first episodes released and have been around for longer, it’s probably why they’re the most popular.
Like my interview with the lovely Selina Johnson who shard so much good stuff about how to hire the right virtual assistant so you can stay working in your genius zone and not get bogged down in tedium that causes a bottleneck for your business growth.
And the fabulous Laura McDouall who gave us a masterclass on content planning and copywriting, how to really connect with your audience. You probably needed to play that one on half speed, she speaks fast and had a tonne to share with everyone.
And Sophie Lechner who helped us see how you can transform what you’re doing on LinkedIn in order to magnetize your ideal clients to work with you.
Those were all very popular episodes. Lots of downloads.
And I’m gratified that my own episodes have been equally popular. But some have been more surprising and had just as many downloads even though they’ve only been out a few months.
90 day business planning, overcoming frustrations to next level income growth, topics around building a sustainable business, creating online group programs and understanding your value proposition, and how to create an offer and sell it fast.
And the 3-part series on the power of podcasting, that broke down my whole journey and the why, what and how to get into podcasting, either as a guest or with your own show.
How Our Episodes Come to Life
People often ask me how I come up with ideas for the episodes. At first, this was just planning the three topics for the launch episodes and then I created a list for the next ten, and added in a few unplanned topics based on people who I wanted to guest for me.
After that I got way more strategic. I created a whole content plan and a workflow and started looking at what parts of the whole podcast production I could outsource to a VA.
So our content plan is the starting point, it’s a spreadsheet that I use to map out all the podcast episode topics that I want to cover over the forthcoming few months. I identify a number of themes that fit the show’s purpose and focus, and we mix it up through each month.
We have a theme for leveraged strategy & planning type topics, and we have three themes for mindset, marketing and money, and we added in an ‘origins story’ theme – to help people resonate with the things we were talking about through my own experiences and those of my clients.
So how do we come up with the actual topics to talk about. Well, as some of you may know, I’ve been blogging for the best part of 10 years, never mind a year, but I never did that as wholeheartedly and consistently until we started the podcast. I just never really sat down and mapped it all out. It was very hit and miss, what I felt in the moment and rarely planned ahead.
For the podcast, it’s been very different and got me into a way higher level of discipline and consistency like never before. Having the 5 themes really helped. And I’m just really chuffed that what were we planning was showing up across the original themes in equal measure.
And we can see all that in our content plan, because the content planning spreadsheet is all colour coded! So the reality matches the plan, which I think is very good, very cool.
Another thing people ask me a lot is how I actually produce an episode. Well, that’s changed a little bit from when I first started. In the beginning, for every episode, except our guest interview episodes, I create an accompanying blog post as well.
Funny enough, in the early days recording the podcast, I used to write the article first and then record the podcast from the script.
As I eased into the role of podcaster, I started writing less of a script and more of an outline. Then we’d used the audio to create the transcript for the blog article. So the other way around.
To be perfectly honest, I still prefer to work up an article first, that’s just how I process my thoughts best. But it’s interesting and kind of funny how you can switch between the two ways around. It just super flexible and creative and I’ll just go with whatever comes more easily for a particular topic.
I think doing the interviews really helped with that whole ‘go with the flow’ too. Although I’ll have my structure and questions to ask my guest, I’m also just happy to let the conversation go where it goes and to dive into things a bit unplanned then come back to the structure. It feels more natural, like a conversation more than an interview.
And the three episodes I did on the power of podcasting came about because I’d been asked to do a training on starting a podcast. So I created a structure and a powerpoint for that: why do it, what’s involved, is it worth it, how do you make it work, how do you make an episode, all that kind of thing.
And based off that presentation and all the questions the audience were asking, I turned it into a dedicated written piece that became three articles for the blog, and then repurposed that into three episodes for the podcast.
I covered the whole process: how we started the show, working out the purpose, the audience, the artwork; how we structured things, the format, the technical equipment; and the workflow and outsourcing.
For anyone who wants that, you can go to my website at jayallyson.com, and either listen to the podcast episodes or read the articles.
And you can find out all about me, and the iSuccess Business Academy, if you want to see how we run this side of the business. Not the consulting side, that’s a separate website, but the coaching and mentoring, and the Leveraged Business Accelerator program – that’s all there.
The Importance of Taking Action
I feel like I’d talked a lot about starting a podcast, and even wrote that I was planning to in my book, but never actually acted right away on creating it. So I want to touch on the importance of taking action when you’re looking at a new initiative to grow your business.
And you may recognise yourself in this if you’ve ever been in that situation where you’re like, I haven’t actually done the thing that I keep telling people I want to do, you know, it’s not really a great feeling. You feel like a fraud, you feel guilty and that feeling became a now or never kind of procrastination.
By the time you get ready to sit down and hit record, I’m like:
“I’ve got my podcast plan done, and I know what I’m going to talk about. I’ve got my launch episode scripts done, I’ve got my big microphone all set up on its stand, looking uber impressive. I’ve recorded my intros and outro. It was like I’m ready. It’s all going to be great. I’m so ready.”
And then at that point of actually doing it, and in my case, stare at the lens of a webcam because you’re doing a zoom call with your guest at the same time, it’s like, what the hell am I doing? How did I get here?
And then you hit record … and everything in my body was saying, no, what the hell are you doing, this is nuts, I can’t do this, keep playing small, stay in your comfy consulting world… You don’t need to do anything more than what you’re doing. What you’ve got is fine. But then you’re doing it. You’re recording or you’re live!
Even though I didn’t really know what the hell I was building a year ago, I did know that I was ready to finally step into the spotlight and be more visible as a coach in the online space, instead of a consultant or mentor behind the rails of my clients’ meeting rooms.
The other cool thing is that I’ve had to push myself outside of my comfort zone of existing knowledge and skills. I know that I know a lot about consulting, about business, about marketing, I’m ace at sales conversations, I close a big majority of prospects.
But I’m also a lifelong learner, it used to be how I ended up procrastinating on new initiatives, because I felt I needed to know more so I could succeed first time. And with wisdom, I appreciate that I can’t ever know everything there is to know.
We have to build the plane as we fly it, that’s a term I now use a LOT! Get started, and learn as you go along.
Given the fact that so much has changed with podcasting in the last year, I’m really glad I started my podcast when I did because audio really is the place to be. And now with doing so much coaching 1:1, and showing up contributing in groups and masterminds, I just feel way more solid in my knowledge and abilities to help people. And I know that comes across in my show as well.
One reviewer mentioned that explicitly, that my confidence yields trust. It said Jay Allyson’s warm confidence gives you trust that she knows what she is talking about. A must-listen.
And, incidentally, it was the podcast queen Anna Parker-Naples, the person that got me started in podcasting in the first place.
So getting that review was a defining moment! It felt like I’d made the cut!
How Success is Counted
It’s interesting because a lot of my book is all about brand positioning and content marketing to attract your ideal audience. And I personally feel invested in learning how to continue to grow our audience, for the podcast show especially because it’s still all so new.
I’m in several big Facebook groups that I won’t name because I have mixed feelings about a couple of them, but there are a few thousand people in these groups and it is fascinating reading through the posts and comments and following the threads.
I found myself comparing our show to other people’s. And especially as I haven’t really pushed the Facebook group that sits alongside the book, the blog, the podcast, I haven’t really done much with it. It’s a nice group of people I actually know personally from business networks, but none of the members post much, me included recently.
And I thought I should do something about it, I should learn more how to grow a FB group. But quite frankly, I don’t need it, it’s not what I’m focusing on right now. And so of course that shows. The group is not growing. What do you think? Am I missing a big opportunity or are people just tired of these groups that make you feel both joyful and jaded in equal measure?
A lot of the times, I feel like, “I’m doing a good job.” But when you hang out in these big FB groups, every once in a while, I’ll see somebody who has started a wildly successful group or has loads of Instagram followers.
Or some people on LinkedIn, they have high numbers of likes and comments every time they post on their own pages or they get lots of call outs from others about how ‘fab’ so-and-so is.
They share news about their crazy podcast stats, tons of downloads, and great reviews or they’re up in the charts and I’ll feel a little envious.
But this isn’t a sour rant, because if I step back without judgment and observe it, certainly the podcast groups I’m in, it’s fascinating to see all the different stages that people are in with their podcasts.
So you can’t expect to compare what you’re doing after one year with what someone’s been doing for many years to build an audience. Doing something like a podcast, it’s a long term strategy, you have to be in it for the longer game, for sure.
And I wonder how I’ll feel when we get close to 100 episodes!
For those who follow Formula 1 racing, it’s like the other week we witnessed Lewis Hamilton winning his 100th race – and everything it took to get there, and 7 world championship titles and he’s still loving it, always pushing for the win.
Not that numbers mean anything. (He says that too, and it makes me smile, because I think those numbers do mean a lot, it’s a very media hyped industry.) Anyway, I remember when I hit our 50th episode and now it’s our one-year anniversary episode. It’s like, “So what, who cares?” I don’t even know if you listeners care about those numbers.
That’s a whole other topic, celebrating milestones and what it means… but the numbers are probably only meaningful to us, not to anyone else really.
This trend that’s ever-increasing on social media to share everything, to brag humbly of course, it is a little bizarre celebrating these milestones. But it’s also super important.
Running a podcast for a whole year is a very big deal by all accounts. There are millions of shows created, but few that last or stay in the top global rankings. And we’re not even very high up, but we’re higher up than 90% of all those millions of other shows. I think that’s a cause for celebration.
But a one-year anniversary, 52 episodes – do we care?
Like the years going by …life’s not going to change just because it’s January 1st.
Likewise, my business isn’t going to change massively just because we hit a year of podcasting or 100 episodes. Maybe at 1000 episodes … that would be pretty cool. Exhausting, but super cool.
Numbers, they do stand for something, but really it’s just arbitrary and it’s always going to be relative to what anyone else is doing.
The question is are you proud of it personally, do you feel accomplished and fulfilled, has it moved the needle somehow for you, for your business.
For myself, if I let go of these hard and fast rules or metrics of success because it’s a slippery slope, I don’t necessarily feel less motivated. And if I have a super clear success metric and I hit it or don’t hit it.
We could say, “We have X number of downloads in our first year.” How does that compare to someone else in your genre or the whole world of podcasters, influencers, celebrities? You do your business and I’ll do mine. We could torture ourselves trying to live up to an ideal that isn’t necessarily even ours to live up to.
But why? Well because I committed to something I felt was important to do, in my career, for the people I serve, for the business. And because I’ve really enjoyed podcasting, more so than I ever thought I would.
And because it’s had a big impact on what we’re able to do next. The bank of content released over the year, 52 episodes, it’s there forever, it’s evergreen. It keeps working for you, for your business, attracting interest, building credibility, generating leads, bringing in new clients.
One of the things that keeps me going with this show is that we haven’t set any hard metrics of what we consider to be successful. I’m grateful that I’ve done it, that I’ve put myself out there to the world, that I’ve shared insights, ideas and hopefully it’s helped people. To me, that’s a huge win.
How Long Success Takes
Another part of the point about success and metrics, is that just because you’re doing something for a long time, doesn’t mean that you’re going to have success from it. Nor does it mean that you have to keep going or not play around with the formula.
Now and again, I’m like, “Should we continue doing one episode every week?” I feel like we’re in the habit of it, but I’m not sure that we need to be doing it weekly – it’s not like these are 10 minutes episodes, they’re substantial pieces, right?
Certainly, from a workload point of view, it sounds appealing to do less, but one of the things about doing this show as I said before is that I actually enjoy it, and the longer I’ve been doing it, it’s felt fluid and easy.
We’d gone a whole 44 episodes – consistently, one every single week without fail – and quite frankly more than once or twice, I’d felt a little up against the wall to bash another one out.
And it was actually my son who said you don’t have to do one every single week, a lot of podcasts don’t do that, they do even do it regularly at all. And he said he just picks up a new episode whenever it gets released. He doesn’t stop and think hey he skipped a week. I just listen to them when they come out. I’m happy to wait.
Now he listens to a lot of podcasts, so I think he had a good point. It’s only ourselves who put these rules in place – someone told us we have to be consistent and show up every week for our audience. And yes, that’s great advice, but you know, it’s ok to skip it on occasion too.
So at one point, I thought I’d do a little experiment. I decided, I’m going to stop for a couple of weeks, see what happens to our numbers. And you know what, the world did not end! No-one complained. And the numbers didn’t change too much.
That’s one reason it’s got to a year – once I got into the rhythm and committed to this, it hasn’t been that challenging especially if I know I can skip the odd week if I’m not inspired or we’re busy with other things.
And because now I’m drawing on the work I’m already doing with clients and talk about that, it’s all aligned and flows easily. And I’m pulling in people for guest interviews who I’m working alongside, some even my clients, or people I notice in my network who are doing great things that are complementary.
There are certainly days where I don’t feel like writing or recording. And sometimes I can feel very up against the wall, because my runway of having 6 episodes in the bag and ahead of us starts to run out.
But energetically, when I look back over a lot of the content I’ve created over the years, I would say the show is probably the easiest kind of work I’ve ever worked on, and that I actually really enjoy too.
And you know we don’t have ‘fancy-smancy’ podcast agency doing our work. I have a couple of VAs who help with content and audio editing, but I also can do it myself, that’s how I started.
So I think you can make a really big deal of some polished, high-fidelity production, but actually as long as there’s no annoying background noises and the content is good, most people listening aren’t expecting or needing broadcast quality.
What do you think? I’ve never had anyone say to me the quality of the sound isn’t good. I’ve had a few people tell me I have a lovely tone to my voice aha, and a couple of audio editors looking for work tell me the sound isn’t as good as it could be … well yeh, sure.
Do I need to spend $4k a month on a podcast production team, nope. But please let me know if You – my lovely listeners – think we should!
The thing that I find interesting too, is if I step back, even with this episode, hopefully, somebody is finding value in it. The most important thing is there wouldn’t be much point being here if it weren’t for the listeners. So downloads are important in that respect.
This is one fascinating element of podcasting. The great majority of shows do not have a huge audience. So I think when you’re getting going, it doesn’t matter if you miss getting the odd episode out. That’s why most people give up.
I’ve seen metrics, especially in the groups that I’m in. A lot of people get really small numbers of readers or listeners, and that’s when I’ll feel a little gleeful. I’m like, “We have 10x what this person gets,” and for a moment that’ll make me feel good.
But most of the time, it’s the other way around. I’ll see some people have continued to build and got into the top 1%. We’re still only in the top 10%, but given the number of podcasts launched is growing exponentially (harks back to stats shared in episode 11. and 33), that means we’re above the other 90% so yay! Out of 2 million + shows, that’s a pretty big deal.
But in all honesty, I focus less on the numbers and more on first, creating really good content that meets your audience where they’re at and second, on the long game commitment – those are my rules. Consistency comes a close third, but 3rd place nonetheless.
If we go back to this idea of our metrics of success, then I’d say followers, listeners, downloads – it’s all very fluid. When I step back in time, 2020 BP, before the podcast, the key thing has been the importance to taking action and getting started.
Moving Through the Ups and Downs
I’ve seen a lot of ups and downs with the podcast too. Some months I have tons of downloads and lots of new subscribers or emails from people. Other months it’s really quiet, like 20 downloads to an episode. And it burns a little because when you put so much work into something, you can’t help but feel like a flop sometimes when people don’t engage.
But that’s life, that’s business, that’s podcasting! You’re competing for attention with a million other things from people’s personal crises to Netflix to the pub or TKMaxx finally being open.
But here’s the secret – every time I get to a point where I feel like that, I look at the content and try to figure out why it didn’t hit the mark or whether we could have promoted the episode better. Every month you plan ahead is an opportunity to figure out what people really want.
And that’s why I started mirroring the topics with what was coming up for my clients, and why I started doing Q&A style episodes, that cut to the things that were standing in the way for people.
The ultimate leverage is using time twice. The content kept rolling, and for some topics, I based the content around stuff from my book, or stuff coming up on Linkedin or in Facebook groups, or questions I get from clients.
I have to say I love doing the Q&A with Dr Jay episodes, because it’s a great way to use time twice. These are questions from challenges, issues real business owners, consultants, coaches are facing in their day-to-day and as they strive to grow and scale their business.
If using time twice and repurposing things isn’t great leverage, I don’t know what is!
Our survey a couple of months ago raised some interesting findings! Firstly, it seems you’re really liking the mini-series episodes, where we dive into a topic over 2 or 3 episodes.
That wasn’t as surprising as the fact you prefer the topic episodes to the interview episodes. I guess I should be flattered, but I’m shocked because I’ve had some totally awesome guests on sharing their insights and complementing the topics. Maybe it’s a rhythm thing.
The one thing that’s been really cool for me, in terms of business metrics is that after launching the podcast and hosting the shownotes on my website jayallyson.com, my site gets 300% more traffic now.
AND, my list grew 1000% – that’s not hard as we really weren’t growing an email list from blogging alone.
What’s less cool is that my FB group hasn’t really caught on. Admittedly, I haven’t really pushed it much either. It was an experiment for me – I’m not hugely into social media, despite having an oddly impressive number of people following me on Twitter.
But it does show that with a highly interactive medium like a FB group, you can’t expect it to grow organically without you doing very much.
So, I’ll either let it go or just leave it be. I’d much prefer it was a community that you as a listener wanted.
Through all of your questions I’ve also been able to push myself as an expert, to find more answers that can give you super impactful results with your business acceleration.
One Year of Podcasting Highlights Major Results for Clients!
Honestly though I think I’m most proud of the fact that I’m 52 episodes in. That’s one year of believing in myself, that I could actually do this – and stay consistent with it, and the results are so incredible.
My email list grows organically because of the content in my podcast that people find, which leads them to sign up for a freebie. I’m also excited about my super amazing clients who are loving the podcast, and just as excited to work with me as I am excited to work with them!
All the things I’ve learned and all the things you hear about online marketing are true – the more consistent you are and the higher the value you provide to your audience, the more likely they are to want to hire you or give you money. And this last year is 100% proof of that. Podcasting ticks both of those boxes.
This Time Last Year
A year ago, just after I launched my podcast, I’d just taken on a contract with a Canadian company to do business coaching on their top tier program. I wasn’t saying never, I was saying hold on for a while.
I continued to take on a few consulting clients of my own and launch a new group program, the Leveraged Business Accelerator, that you see now, which accompanied my book, the diagnostic assessment and the podcast.
Everything was beautifully aligned, but I couldn’t resist working with this company, because it was a chance to work alongside Danny Iny who I’d known for close to a decade and is very much in tune with my own values and how I see the world of education and business shifting and merging.
My Leveraged Business Accelerator program is built upon the same iSuccess framework I write about in my book and that I’ve been using for many years with my consulting clients, small to medium sized businesses.
And this coaching role aligned very well with my existing work and was a chance to work more with solo entrepreneurs, solo professionals who for one reason or another have decided to go it alone, fire their boss, and take up self-employment.
These are people who are awesome at their areas of expertise but need help with business strategy, and planning for growth – no matter what stage of business:
- you’re at the start of this and need help to clarify your offer; or
- you’ve done your market research and testing and need help to package your offer and get it out to market; or
- you already have a sellable offer and clients and are having trouble to grow and scale the business.
I’ve finally reached the place where I’m really playing in an area that was true to me, in my zone of genius. 4-5 years of working with entrepreneurs and all their challenges, made me realize the three things that business owners really struggle with – mindset, marketing and money.
So how to make sure you’re building a business that is both profitable AND sustainable for you, that gives you the income and impact you want but doesn’t kill you?
Or put a better way, how to build a business that makes you feel fulfilled, in alignment with your calling and not such a crazy 60-hour work week that you can’t take time off.
As I talked about in my interview with Sarah Cooke in the last two episodes, the goal is to have the time, money and freedom to do the things that make you happy, whether that’s time with family and friends, spontaneity to go for walks or have days out.
And to be able to buy stuff when you need or want it, to be able to help others out – not just the bank of mum & dad kind of thing, but charities, investments, as well as fun things.
You know, law of attraction things never used to land with me. And now I’m into it, because it does work. It has worked for me for a full year now and it’s very cool.
The whole of 2020 was weird for most of us, right? Everything felt very uncertain, it was impossible to make plans in most aspects of our lives, but there was a feeling in my gut that I should keep going on the leveraged business work.
And that included actually pulling the trigger and finishing and publishing the book, launching the podcast, creating the accelerator program.
And I was really looking forward to the opportunity to create something that I felt super passionate about and super committed to. And I did it. One year on. And I’ve loved it.
Now it’s time to do some other awesome thing. So my big announcement is this …
What’s Coming Next
In the next year, I’m looking forward to welcoming a new group of iSuccess Achievers. If you haven’t got the results you want yet for your business, I do hope we can work together to get you moving forward, or rather onwards and upwards!
My big announcement is that I’m offering a special opportunity to work with me on a 90-day business acceleration project in a 1:1 rather than in a group. I’ll be talking about it in more detail next week.
For now I’ll just say upfront that I genuinely only have 6 places to offer – that’s not some scarcity tactic, it’s just that’s the time and space I have and any more it would compromise the work I do with each person.
And I’m only offering it for people who want to talk strategy and dive into implementation in December starts. If you’re someone that likes to ease into the holidays and then accelerate in the new year, you may miss out. I may do it again in the new year, or I may not.
I’m opening up a special door for you to access my Leveraged Business Accelerator and have the chance to go through the program working with me one-to-one.
As I’m currently working with individuals in another accelerator program, and people are getting really amazing results, it makes sense and it’s a great opportunity for you to get the personalised support you need – whether that’s coaching, mentoring or implementation help – and I can tell you it will be at a very affordable group program price.
So if that’s of interest, and you’re an early bird who likes to catch the juiciest worm, get in touch with me, get on my list, connect on social media, and let’s have a talk and see if it’s something that’s a good fit for where you’re at and if it’s the right time for you to push past what’s currently standing in your way.
How would it feel to get a fresh pair of eyes on your business goals, to work out your main bottleneck and work on the fix alongside an experienced business strategist, someone who knows digital marketing, can help you with enrolment calls?
What would be your success milestone if you made a huge stride forward over the next 3 months?
Right now, in my life, 1:1 is how I’m rolling. I personally don’t want to do that much marketing and launching, because it burns me out. And I’m busy enough working with my ACES people. It’s more of tuning into my energy levels, what energises me and what drains me.
When it comes to energy, you have to decide what kind of work is most worth it.
And although I’m a huge fan of having a big vision for your business, and your life, I also feel we all need help with getting some short-term wins, because the long-term plans can shift so much.
If we’ve learned anything in 2020, it’s that we don’t know what’s around the corner.
Speaking of plans, remember back in March and April 2020, our political leaders were telling us that the pandemic was not going to last that long, to go ahead and continue making plans for the future.
And the scientists were saying hmm hold on a minute. And the people, we were just confused and anxious. Some of us were ahead of the game, others waited. What kind are you?
Here we are approaching the close of 2021 and I don’t even know what the holidays are going to be like for people – celebrate new opportunities or stay home and tighten our belts.
My advice is simple – we don’t know what’s around the corner but it’s not going back to normal anytime soon, if at all. We are now more than ever before in the digital age.
With so much movement towards online and digital, the marketplace is what we make it. Don’t wait for your life to start again, don’t wait for your business to pick up.
There are things everyone can do in the short term to get momentum and build for long term success.
Thank you, lovely listeners!
Finally, I just want to say thank you to those who have been listening over the last year, following along, sharing your feedback and asking questions, I love it!
You really have made me feel like the work I put into the Leveraged Business podcast is worth every second and I’m so thrilled that I’ve been able to help so many consultants, coaches and expert practitioners and small business owners over this past 12 months, and to have the impact and success I was wanted from doing the podcast.
So thank you again, it’s been amazing. And I hope you’ll stay tuned with me and my amazing team for the next year! If we get to work together, even better!
To join the free FB group – just click below 🙂
Links:
Get my FREE STUFF: https://jayallyson.com/isuccess/free-stuff/
The Leveraged Business Podcast: https://jayallyson.com/podcast
Episode 5: https://jayallyson.com/podcast/90-day-business-planning
Join the Leveraged Business Accelerator: https://jayallyson.com/isuccess/LBA
Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn @JayAllysonDempster and follow me on Facebook @isuccessbusinessacademy, Twitter @isuccessba, Instagram at @jayallyson and don’t forget to rate, review and subscribe to the Leveraged Business Podcast wherever you get your podcasts: https://ratethispodcast.com/getleveraged
