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5 Things I Didn’t Do to Build a Multi Six-Figure Business

• Nicole Harlow: Entrepreneur, Designer, Yoga Teacher, Lifehacker + Author

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In this episode of "Wealthy Wellness Biz," Nicole Harlow turns conventional wisdom on its head by sharing the five things she didn’t do to build her multi six-figure branding and marketing agency. Tune in to discover how breaking the "rules" and embracing your authentic self can lead to greater success in your business.

Action Steps:

  • Identify What Works for You: Reflect on your own personality and business needs to determine which conventional advice to embrace or discard.
  • Create Your Own Path: Don’t be afraid to break the "rules" and create a business strategy that aligns with your unique style.
  • Flexibility is Key: Embrace flexibility in your planning and scheduling to allow for greater creativity and productivity.

Listener Challenge: What's one thing you don’t do in your business that has actually contributed to your success? Share your insights with us in the comments or on social media!

Welcome!


I run three award-winning marketing / automations, branding & podcast production agencies for wellness brands, health-based businesses, health clinics and clinician entrepreneurs

Follow on Instagram @brandbetterco.

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Speaker 1:

Hi and welcome to today's episode of Wealthy Wellness Biz with your host, me, nicole Harlow. So today we're shaking things up a little bit by diving into a topic that might just turn your idea of success on its head. So I'm going to be sharing with you the five things that I didn't do to build a multi-six-figure branding and marketing agency, and these are things that will also, you know, I hope inspire you to be a little bit more rebellious. And, yeah, these are definitely the things that all the gurus said that I should do. So my little like aside here is I've been a digital entrepreneur for, I think, over 16 years now, so I've seen all of the trends, I've watched the webinars, read the books, right, and all these things that you need to do to build a successful business, and there's a couple of things that I really scrapped along the way. Now I would say that pretty much everything that's on this list. Let me look at my list for a second. Everything on this list I did try to do at some point, so that's my also. My caveat is like I've tried this. These are things that I scrapped and I still was successful, and maybe, in some ways, I was more successful because I scrapped them. So these are going to be different for you because everybody's personality is so different. I think as I got more time under my belt running this business, I started to focus more on things like astrology and human design. I started to look into my own kind of like blueprint and recipe, so to speak, to ask myself, like you know, in my design, like what is really right for me. So, for example, in human design as a manifesting generator, it's important for me to, for my design right in quotes, it's important for my design to have lots of ideas and give myself a lot of freedom to explore those ideas of why I scrapped some of these things in order to be more successful, in order to be more authentic to myself and, you know, find that perfect balance between discipline but also allowing myself to be me. So let's dive in.

Speaker 1:

So the first thing is about waking up at 5am. So you know, remember, like the 5am morning and the miracle morning and this. So you know, remember, like the 5 am morning and the miracle morning and this whole. Like you know, the most successful CEOs and entrepreneurs get up at 5 am and I that doesn't work for me. I, deadass, get up at 10 am most days and sometimes it's 11.

Speaker 1:

I like to sleep in, but it also it's part of like there's a reason why I wanted to be an entrepreneur and part of that reason is to be able to march to the beat of my own drum, to follow the, you know, to create a business and life that I love to take it from Marie Borleo. I think that was her catchphrase. Create a business and life that I love to take it from Marie Borleo, I think that was her catchphrase. Create a business and life that you love. That really hit me way back in the day when I was starting to put things together. It's just like you know, I don't want to do meetings before 12. Then I won't. I don't want to wake up early and then just rush right into business because it doesn't feel like the life that I want. You know, I want a morning where I get to sleep in and not that that's like that every single day. But I've crafted and created a business that allows me to sleep in if I want to and not feel like. I give myself permission here to feel successful and also not be a morning person.

Speaker 1:

So number two is about mission and vision. So I've always felt like there was this like and this is funny because it's coming from a branding person but I really did feel like there's always pressure to have like a clear, really world-changing mission or a vision, and I found that always. I found that really overwhelming and because, like I barely have a vision most days, to be honest, I think I follow a lot of you know. Besides, there's a core. I've simplified things massively over the years and so I know what my core focus is. I know how to be successful, I know how to find clients, I know how to do good work.

Speaker 1:

So this is not about like being like wishy-washy, but I find that I'm in my best flow when I'm in my intuition, when I'm improvising, when I'm getting excited about things, when I very fluid and organic. But it really has been the cornerstone of the agency's growth and my business growth is relying on and this you know, this can track with your menstrual cycle, but allowing myself to like not have to follow, well, I'm getting a little ahead of myself because I want to talk about this in a second, so I'm going to stay here with this one about the mission and the vision and that, for me, is like I feel, like I've always got a little overwhelmed with feeling like I'm here to change the world. I've never really had that feeling and I think you know I want to be in this like very vulnerable around, like they think it feels like you know, as a business owner you have to have like this really grandiose like vision of just like I see these other entrepreneurs are, just like we want to change the lives of a million women this year. I've never really had that. I'm more like I want a handful of clients that I love. I want to really enjoy the work that I do. I want to make a difference in the small group of clients that we work with and beyond that it translates more to lifestyle. Right, I want to have financial abundance, because then that seeds a lifestyle of being able to like travel and enjoy and savor, right. But but I think for me this is kind of your permission slip to be like it's OK to not have the huge mission and vision. I don't have that taped on my wall and I'm not like here to like change lives of a thousand brands you know, through our products and services. So it's okay if you only want to like work with a small amount of people too.

Speaker 1:

As an introvert and somebody who is like very protective of my energy, like I don't want to have a thousand clients, I want to have like four or five. You know, and if you're, if you resonate with that message, then it's about getting really good at what you're doing so that you can like confidently charge more for the services that you offer and then figure out how many people do I need to work with in any given situation week, month, year, whatever your metric of success is to get to that number Right. And so, you know, I think I like sharing that with you because it feels like, as an entrepreneur, like you're supposed to have like this yeah, like you want to do like the Silicon Valley, turn this into like a billion dollar business, and that's never really been that. You know, I think I have a small mission. I have like a mission with a with a lowercase m and a vision with a lowercase v, because for me, the problem with vision too, is I don't want to get locked in. It's nice to have a direction and know where you're going, but sometimes the vision can really hamper you from pivoting right, and so you feel like I'm so locked into this like vision that it has to happen that you don't see opportunities that are coming where. I was like, oh, if I went down that, like that avenue over there, there's something really cool to explore down there, and I feel like I've always wanted to just like have a little bit of freedom to pivot to.

Speaker 1:

So number three these are five things that I didn't do to become successful. So so have you heard about like focusing on selling the one thing? Right, I'm like all caps with that. Like the one thing like there's a lot of, especially if you're like digital products, virtual business kind of thing you hear a lot of like in order to be successful, you just have to have like one program. Like you pick one program one thing, you focus on it for a year, you focus on it for five years, and I love that as a concept. Like I am not anti that idea at all, but it doesn't work for me, though.

Speaker 1:

If you see the suite of products that we're selling, we're like selling everything from like brand design strategy, copywriting, web design, social media management, podcast production. We help people with their online programs. Together, I like a big, juicy project that has lots of different parts to it it's. I don't want to just sell one thing. I know that I personally would not feel satisfied if we only sold websites, websites, right, or we only worked with one type of thing, or if I had one program like how to start your own podcast right Our profitable wellness podcast program. If I just did that and it was just a series of like launching that over and over again, teaching that over and over again, I would be so bored.

Speaker 1:

I'm not designed to facilitate one thing, and embracing that has really been the key to our success, because when we started adding more things right, so like the focus now is more on like having a client, like, like you know, selling a client, right I was I was gonna like pause and not say the word selling and I'm like why am I like censoring myself? Like this? We're business owners like part of this is to sell and get really good at selling. So so step one is selling the client, bringing them into our ecosystem, working really well, doing a great job, and then offering them like here are the other complimentary things that we offer that you can work with us right, because we did a great job, we have a great rapport and we want to keep working with you, right, and so I focused more on that. So adding new things that would help complement.

Speaker 1:

So, if someone comes in for a logo, well, it seems natural that we would offer also a website. And if you're getting a website, well, why wouldn't we offer copywriting? And if you've done all of this stuff, then why wouldn't you continue to work with us for our marketing services, like podcasting or social media, et cetera, et cetera? So if you are multifaceted and you get bored just doing one thing, allow yourself to have permission to, you know, offer several different things, but I would say, in order to now, I'm not going to say that you can't be successful if they're all very different offers, but I would say there's probably more success to be had if, instead of just having the one thing, you have multiple things, but they speak to one type of avatar and kind of gets them at different parts of their journey. Right, you've just done this part, so now here we have another offer. That's kind of perfect for you.

Speaker 1:

So, number four things that I didn't do is hyper-focused goals. Now, you may be sensing a theme here, and a little bit of that theme is just like don't tell me what to do and I think that's okay, right, and so hyper-focused goals not really my style. So this has been universal. No matter how many planners I buy, like of all these different, like different, like hey, here's a great way to organize like your day and your to-do list, my plan always ends up on a sheet of printer paper this has been the same thing for years or like a copy book, like piece of paper, and it's like less than 100 words, right, and so it's like it's like handwritten, I'm like crossing it off, but I'm and yeah, I don't know it might sound kind of chaotic to some people, but flexibility, broad circle approach to planning has really allowed me to see and seize opportunities and adapt in ways that kind of rigid goal setting never could on, both like goal setting broadly and then also like to-do list too. I mean, the to-do list is important and it gets written down on a sheet of paper, but goal setting for like the year or strategic planning quarterly is usually like a very like broad strokes kind of thing for me. And now I'm not saying that this is the best way to be, I'm just saying I haven't done any of this and our business I still feel is very successful, and I know these are all little permission slips. You can take all five permission slips or you can take none, because some people need like the intensive strategic planning to like get motivated right. For me that's not the case. So I like to just kind of broadly know where I'm going, rather than having these like hyper-focused goals.

Speaker 1:

And number five again, sticking with the theme is sticking to a strict schedule. So I've tried various you know all the blogs and all the like productivity things and you know I've every time I've tried to like create like a strict schedule where I'm just like oh, monday is Monday, afternoon is going to be my like deep work, right, I'm going to just like turn off all the notifications and Tuesday is going to be all my calls and I'm going to post on social media at the same time every day and these are going to be my totally not for me, totally not for me. As soon as I like create some kind of system, I instantly want to break it, and I usually do so. Like that system will last like three days and then the next thing I know I'll be like oh, my god, I haven't like like I get frustrated because I'm like create this like really rigid system for myself. Like, whether that be a social media posting, like as soon as I'm like on Mondays we're going to post this and Wednesdays we're going to post this. Fridays this I like instantly don't want to do it.

Speaker 1:

So I have got to like give myself some like freedom, because as soon as I create a system, I feel like it's my boss and I feel like I am here as an entrepreneur doing my own thing because I don't want to feel like I'm anybody's boss. I know I don't want to feel like anyone is my boss and I actually don't want to feel like I'm anybody's boss either. So that's, you know the relationship with the team, where everybody's very independent, right, and so like we all kind of work together independently to create the team. But I like having more of a, like a flexible I read somewhere that like for manifesting generators in human design, like one of the most important things. Like, rather than giving yourself a to-do list, give yourself like a daily menu or a weekly menu, and I find that I get way more done if I'm like I know there's certain things you have to do on a specific day, specifically like client focused stuff. Like there'll be days where, like, I have to get on this call or have to create a deliverable to a client or answer emails, but, like, in terms of my own to-do list for the week and the things that I want to get done, you know, within the business, right, marketing, et cetera I like to give myself a menu and then pick the thing out of the menu that feels like the most aligned with where my energy is.

Speaker 1:

So, like today, I'm sitting down to record podcast episodes, but I'm recording like a bulk of them because it feels like this is where my energy is the most accessible, right. But the other day I was sitting down there doing, like setting up funnels and things like very like introverted, like non-talky, just check things off the boxes. That's where my energy was just like okay, I just want to put some music on, and so that doesn't always fall on a Monday afternoon, right, and so I like to just kind of like have a menu of options that could be for the day or it could be for the week. So that was my five things, and I'd really love to know what is one thing that you don't do in your business. So I think sometimes, breaking the rules is exactly what you need to set yourself apart and really thrive in business.

Speaker 1:

And unfortunately, it did take me a little while to like get that lesson, because there was many years I feel like I was like following along the paths that other people were presenting coaches and programs in order to get success, like you have to do it this way. And I think when you're just getting started, like there's a lot of you know, it feels like well, there's a system, so I'm just going to follow the system. But a lot of times that system felt like it was kind of jarring or bumping up against my natural personality traits. Right, and so, knowing that there are things that you can not do in your business, there are successful business owners out there that aren't even on social media, right. So give yourself permission for some things to not do in your business, and you know, know that breaking the rules is sometimes essential.

Speaker 1:

So, thanks for tuning into today's episode. I found it a real pleasure debunking some of these must-do myths and also sharing my approach with you guys, getting a little vulnerable and authentic, and I just want you to remember, if you take something away from today's episode, it's not always about doing everything by the book. Sometimes it's about what works for you and your unique business and your unique personality. So reach out if you're ready to embrace a different way of doing things and let's make your brand stand out in the best way possible. Here's to doing business your way and making it extraordinary.