Our Framework For Constant Refinement As An Entrepreneur

If there’s anything I’ve learnt from both my own experience as an entrepreneur scaling a 6-Figure Agency and in supporting my clients through their own experiences, it’s that entrepreneurship is a JOURNEY. It requires constant development of you as a human being, as a business owner and as a leader.

 

If you’re reading this then you’re probably much like us. A high achieving, multi-passionate woman with big ambitions to create impact in the world and build a legacy much bigger than yourself. Therefore you’re also not new to the roadblocks and bottlenecks that come with this.

 

The challenges we face as driven pioneers in the online space can be tricky to navigate and without the right support can seem never ending. I’ve seen too many scaling business owners have their motivation for the business they started out of a love for the industry and excitement to build a life of freedom, be lost to packed calendars, burning the midnight oil and the challenges of business consuming their entire life. That’s why we took the way we support our clients and condensed it into this simple framework that everyone can apply in their business to support them in overcoming business challenges and regaining their spark.

 

Our framework is simple. Yet it has the capability to solve even the most complex issues. It can be applied across all areas of your business and even your personal life. It consists of three stages; Find the pattern ➝ Fix the problem ➝ Refine. All of which I’m going to dive into in detail with you now.

 

Where a lot of people go wrong in spotting the gaps in their business, is by viewing the issues that come up as isolated incidences and trying to solve them as such. The truth is that most of the challenges you’re facing in your business will link back to a specific set of actions, events or behaviours. Therefore the first step to solving any issue is spotting the specific sequence at the crux of it. And the ONLY way you’re going to be able to do this, especially if you’re at the beginning stages of scaling your business and you’re busy wearing all the hats, is to to create VISIBILITY.

 

If you think of a surgeon in a hospital. They’re not spending their days flitting through the forms and taking tests to get the information they need, they have a team and systems around them that do that for them. So that when it comes down to it they have all of the key information they need at their finger tips. As a CEO you should be operating similarly. You shouldn’t be spending your days trying to navigate the messy backend of your business or chasing people up for the things you need to do your job. You should have all of the key metrics and decision driving information in your business visible at the click of a button. And once you have visibility of this information, you need to pay attention to what it’s telling you. By reviewing the data collated you will be able to zoom out and spot the patterns (both positive and negative) recurring in your business.

 

(P.s. Positive patterns are a specific set of actions, events or behaviours that compound towards the growth and development of your business. Whereas negative patterns are a specific set of actions, events or behaviours that compound to burden and halt this growth and development.)

Once you’ve spotted the pattern you can reverse engineer to solve the problem at the root. For example, you feel like your team are struggling to take initiative. They’re constantly messaging you both in and outside of your working hours, pulling you out of whatever your doing. Whether that be important work on projects/client accounts/high level development, or time spent recuperating outside of the business.

 

Pattern one is that your team members are messaging you all of the time. To fix this problem at the source you need to look deeper than simply replying. You need to ensure that you have the appropriate communication channels in place and the documentation of your boundaries surrounding these communication channels is accessible and established with the team.

 

The patterns leading on from this are found in the details. What are your team members messaging you about? Is it access?.. client info?.. guidance on a specific task?.. Whatever it is, that’s the problem that needs fixing. Some example’s of how we’ve solved these issues in our own business are; having a bank for account details so that the team have access to all of the account details they need in order to fulfil their roles, having a designated area in our Project Management System for each client where all team members can find whatever info they need for the client accounts they’re working on, and having SOP’s for all tasks within the business so that they can be delegated and completed efficiently.

 

The last, and maybe my favourite step in this entire framework… Refinement. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; If the problem you fixed was ever really a problem, you’ll most likely see a 2nd, 3rd, sometimes even 4th wave of issues cropping up in the business throughout the process of fixing it. This may sound tedious (and don’t get me wrong, sometimes it most definitely is). But it’s in these refinements, that the real progress is made. It’s in the gaps, leaks and small tweaks that the tailoring and future proofing of these solutions takes place. And it’s through the the tailoring and future proofing of these solutions that the real progression towards achieving your bigger vision happens.

 

And even once you’ve dealt with the aftershocks, it doesn’t end there. Because if you want to gain and maintain growth within your business sustainably, then you need to focus on CONSTANT REFINEMENT. As your business evolves, your systems and processes are going to need to evolve alongside it. Otherwise your going to find yourself in the same sticky situation I see too many scaling CEO’s fall victim to, whereby they didn’t focus on updating or refining their systems and processes whilst experiencing rapid growth. And now the business is capped by it’s stagnant, outdated operations.

 

The result of our framework is simple. Progress. Every pattern we find, every problem we fix and every solution we refine takes us one step closer in the right direction.

 

Of course we all have goals that we wish to achieve, but the real magic happens when you realise that there isn’t an end goal. There is only progression. Because life is unpredictable. And just when you think you’ve got it mastered, something changes and the cycle begins again; find the pattern ➝ fix the problem ➝ refine.

 

And once you realise the cycle is CONSTANT. You start to realise the the joy and fulfilment you feel was never really found in the achievement of the big goals, but in the journey to achieving them.