What I Would Do if I Got my Hands On Your Business (and How You Can Audit Yourself)

In this episode, Laura pulls back the curtain on what she actually looks at when she steps into a client’s business.

If you’ve ever felt stuck, like you’re working hard but not seeing the results you want, this conversation will give you a completely different lens. From time and delegation to offers, visibility, and systems, Laura walks through the eight key areas she audits — and how small gaps in these areas can quietly cost you time, energy, and money.

This is the kind of episode that will have you taking notes… and seeing your business differently by the end.

In this episode you will hear:

00:08 – Why most business advice falls short (and when to run)

02:28 – The 8 key areas Laura audits in every business

03:30 – Time: where your hours are really going

04:51 – The 2-week time audit (and why it matters)

06:00 – Delegation & team: why you’re still doing everything

07:11 – Personal fulfillment as a business strategy

08:30 – Brand & vision: when it’s clear in your head but nowhere else

09:34 – Offers & revenue: where most businesses are leaking money

11:58 – Marketing & visibility: do you actually have a marketing problem?

14:17 – Customer experience: what people remember (and what you’re missing)

16:39 – Systems: the hidden chaos behind the scenes

18:00 – Why generic strategies only get you so far

19:03 – Laura’s “superpower” in business (and how to apply it)

20:00 – Invitation to go deeper inside Ambition Mastermind

21:25 – What transformation actually looks like for clients

business audit, business growth strategy, time management for entrepreneurs, delegation tips, offer suite review, marketing visibility, revenue leaks, business systems, client experience, entrepreneurial mothers, small business coaching, work smarter not harder, business mentorship, mom entrepreneur, CEO mindset

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Transcript

Coaching Red Flags And Real Help

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Welcome back to another episode of this Mother Means Business. I have been working on some new client roadmaps recently. And I thought to myself, I want to share with you, my listeners, about what I would do if I got my hands on your business. Because I think there's a lot of confusion. And certainly the business coaching space gets a bad rap. And I'm going to tell you right now, if you've hired a business mentor, a business coach, and they have just told you to post more on social media that you should run. If you have them telling you that you my phone's going off. Sorry, Mike. If you have a business mentor that's telling you that you just need to manifest more, you should probably run. And if your business mentor isn't diving into the weeds with you, if they're not looking at your data, they're not willing to look at your sales pages and your emails and your offers and actually seeing how you're going to get there, you should run. So my intent today with this episode is not just to talk about me, but to also talk about how these things that I look at can be things that are really impactful for you in your business and give you some food for thought if you're in a season of being stuck. Okay. And if you're like, ugh, I just, my business is just in this place where it like, I don't know. I'm not, I'm not hitting the targets that I want to go, or maybe you've been kind of on the same hamster wheel for a while. My hope is that when you hear the things that I look at, that you'll be able to look at them for yourself or at least identify the areas that need to be looked at. Okay. So every single time I sit down with a new mastermind or a new private client, I do the exact same thing. I look at their business as a whole before I look at any one problem. Because usually people will come to me and they'll say, I just need to make more money, or I have a marketing problem, or or I just have no idea what the problem is. Um, and usually it's like there's a bunch of stuff going on, but it's never, I just need to make more money. Um, more money feels like it might fix a lot of problems, but it won't fix all of them. And certainly if, you know, if you think about your business, if I were to say to you, okay, if I give you 10 times the clients right now, would that crush you? And for most of the women that come to me, the answer is yes. And so today I really want to share with you sort of how I identify what the root cause of these issues are, the eight areas that I think are incredibly important to look at outside of finance. We know, and I have shared this with you before in the show, finance, not my expertise. So I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that I know how to dive into your PL and uh how to maximize profits in that way and do taxes, and that's not my thing. I always refer out, I've had so many incredible people on the show on that subject matter. And so what I want to talk about is the eight areas that I look at, what I almost always find, and what I tell you to do about it. Okay.

The VIP Assessment Framework

SPEAKER_00 3:01

So I put all of my mastermind clients, all of my private clients, through a VIP assessment. And that VIP assessment happens in person for my private clients, which is super fun. For my mastermind clients, we do it virtually. And it's not about finding what's broken all the time, it's usually about what's costing you. And let's be honest, none of us run perfect businesses. So there always are things that are going to be broken, and there probably are things that are costing you. And that cost can show up in a few different ways, right? It can definitely be costing you money. Usually it's costing you time. It's almost always costing you energy and sanity. Okay. And so my job as a business mentor, and what any business mentor should be doing, is identifying how do we pay less in time, energy, sanity, money. Okay. So what I find is that so many business owners are just so deep in the day-to-day they can't actually see their own patterns. And so I get to come in as this external lens, which is really fun for me. And so I want to take you through the areas. I want to take you through some examples of how I've seen this show up. But I also hope that it's going to give you some food for thought on how you can create some changes. So

Time Audit And CEO Focus

SPEAKER_00 4:08

the first area that we always look at is time, right? Where are your hours actually going? Because for so many of us, we just have no idea. Okay. And what I almost always see with women sort of at that pre-six figures into 200,000 mark is just way too much time in admin and not enough protected time for actual CEO thinking. Okay. I see this so, so, so often. And we know, and we've talked about this on the show, if we can move you out of that sort of admin role into those lower value tasks into real CEO tasks, that's going to be a really big shift. And so, how do you know if this is you? You know this is you if you're busy literally all day long and you can't point to what move the needle. Okay. And so, what I would do in this instance, if this was, if I were seeing this, right? If a client was spending simply too much time in admin, I would have them do a two-week time audit. And then we would build a weekly rhythm that protects their focus based on that audit. Okay. And that is something that you can do for yourself, right? You can audit your time for the next two weeks. And I know you might be hearing this and thinking, that sounds boring as shit. And it might feel that way. When I first started my career, I worked at a PR agency and I had to track my time every 15 minutes because it was billable and it was exhausting and I hated it. But having awareness of what you're actually spending your time on, what are your high value tasks, what are the things that you could be delegating? And I don't want to say should because there's lots of nuance in that. And we'll talk about delegation in a second, but you need to know how you're spending your time. And so almost every new client that I get has to do a two-week time audit because we got to know what we're talking about, right? If you're going to come to me and you're like, I'm just so tired, I'm overwhelmed, I'm exhausted, it's like, okay, why? And we need to know that. Okay.

Delegation And Team Ownership

SPEAKER_00 5:51

The next thing that I look at after we're done with time and schedule is we look at delegation and team. Okay. And this is the one that surprises people the most because often people do have some support, even if it's like a five-hour VA or somebody like a month, a really, really small period of time, but they're still doing everything themselves. Um, and a really classic pattern of that is not using your VA, right? Because there's no SOPs or you feel like you're just going to do it faster yourself. Um, and sometimes we don't have team. Typically, the women that I'm working with at this level do have some support because we know that revenue has to precede support a lot of the time, especially if we're dealing with a non-revenue generating employee, like somebody like a VA. Certainly, if you have revenue generating employees, which are people that would do work for you, essentially make money for you. Sometimes that can be a little bit of a different conversation. But in the delegation and team section, what I would do is have you redefine what your team actually owns, get it out of your head and into a system. And if you know me, if you have been here on the show long enough, you know that I'm a big picture thinker. I hate the minutiae. I hate it. However, I cannot get my team to stay in the minutiae to be in the weeds the way that I need it to, if I don't take the time to build the system. And so that part of it is super essential. Third

Personal Fulfillment As Strategy

SPEAKER_00 7:09

thing we look at is personal fulfillment. Okay. Yes, this is on the assessment. It matters strategically. When you are depleted, your decision making suffers, your creativity suffers, and your clients feel it. Okay. And so I often see women who have completely removed themselves from their lives in service of their business, and the business isn't even working yet, right? They are so in service of their business and they are pre-revenue or they're making $50,000 a year. Okay. What I would do is establish my non-negotiables, right? It could be movement. It could be one thing a month that's just for you. It could be eating a real lunch, not eating at your desk. Okay, these can be small things, but these are things that we have to protect. You cannot exist in service of your business. Your business needs to exist to serve you. There will be seasons where, yeah, you might be in service of your business for a little bit, but it cannot be our baseline. So that's the third thing. Fourth

Brand Vision That Leaves Your Head

SPEAKER_00 8:05

thing we look at is brand and vision. Okay, the vision is usually there, right? Most women that are um, if you're pursuing the mastermind, you're pursuing mentorship one-on-one, you're probably pursuing bigger than what you have right now, right? And that's fine. If you're listening to the show, I'm willing to bet you are in pursuit of something bigger than what you have right now. And so you have a vision for the most part, right? It's there, it's big, it's clear, it's exciting. The gap is that it lives in your head and nowhere else. Okay. Or we haven't established the roadmap to actually get from where you are now to that vision. And so things like your website, your Instagram, your emails, none of that actually reflects where you're headed and what you're actually becoming. And so what I love to do is get the brand story on paper first, if it doesn't already exist. And then everything else gets easier to write from there and delegate. If you're clear on where you're actually going, and we know that, listen, we're all entrepreneurs. Usually, if you choose entrepreneurship, you are a person that pursues perfection. And so you might be a person that is going to move the goalpost on yourself. And that's okay. But we do need to know, okay, for now, and certainly for me, you know, when I'm entering a 12-month relationship with someone, it's like, okay, what is the end goal for what we want after our, you know, 12 months together or six months together? But then also, what is your big vision for your business, knowing that there's a chance that that vision's actually just going to get bigger once we have worked together for a year, once you see what's actually possible. But having that clarity around the brand and vision, super, super important. And you can have that whether you like work with a brand designer or work with a graphic designer or someone who builds your website, like none of that is necessary. It helps, but it's not required uh in your business. Don't shoot me, brand designers. Don't come for me. Okay. I love you, but please, please don't shoot

Profitable Offers And Revenue Mapping

SPEAKER_00 9:59

me. Okay, so the next thing that we look at is your offers and revenue. And this is the fifth of eight things. And this is where I usually get really honest really fast. And this is the part of business that is frustrating for me in my work as a business owner because all I want to do is see women make more money. And when I have women apply for my programs that are making 30K a year, 50K a year, I'm like, girl, can we can fix this? And usually the issue is here, okay? And it's looking at are your offers actually profitable when you account for your time? And most people just haven't done this math, right? They're just picking a number out of thin arrow. I'm gonna charge $500 for that when really they should be charging $3,000 for it because they're trying to be affordable, they're trying to be palatable, or a range of other reasons. And it's truly just not clicking. I also see a lot of busy businesses that aren't making money, a lot of untapped offers that are sitting as someday ideas. And what the thing that I do is in this sort of offer and revenue is we will map revenue by offer, we will find the leaks, and we will build the next logical thing if we don't have a really clear ascension plan. We will also look at the goals that we have for our revenue and what is required to get there. I have had many conversations with women that say to me, Hey, I want to make 10K months in my business. And I say, Great, tell me about your offers, tell me about your capacity. And when we look at those, they there is no path to making 10K months based on what they're currently selling and how much time they have to sell it. Okay, so we get really clear and really honest about that. And so if you are listening to this and thinking, oh gosh, I am that person, send me a DM on Instagram and I'm gonna send you a revenue mapping document. Actually, I'm gonna do better. I'm gonna put it in the show notes so that you can download this revenue mapping document. And I want you to just use it. Look at your offers, put in everything that you have, how much they cost, how many you're gonna sell every month in order to get to your revenue target. You need to know. Otherwise, you're just flying blind.

Visibility That Builds Real Demand

SPEAKER_00 12:09

Sixth thing is marketing and visibility, okay? And often you need to get more visible. This is often, especially in the early stages of your business. This is something that you really need to get more visible. Most people don't have enough visibility on their business, and that's okay. But usually we need consistency as well on the marketing side. So when we think about marketing and visibility, this is a piece where a lot of people come to me and say, hey, I have a marketing issue. And actually, sometimes it's a customer experience issue, and sometimes it's a sales issue. Um, and some of us do have enough people engaging with our businesses and following along that we don't need more eyeballs, but the majority of us do need more eyeballs. And frankly, having more eyeballs is never a bad thing. So we create strategies. How do we get more eyeballs? How do we get more people knowing about our business? And when I'm saying that, I don't mean how do we go viral on social media. It's how are we actually establishing what our lane is? How do we get consistent there? How do we build simple follow-up systems for leads that are already in our world? And then how do we just get in front of more people? Because we know proximity to real buyers is essential for building our business. Okay. For many of you as well, some of our best clients come from referrals and relationships. And most people aren't being intentional about that at all. I have done many, many, many episodes on the show specific to marketing, specific to referrals, specific to relationships. So you can find those. I'll link some of them in the show notes as well if you feel like that's you. But what I would do, okay, if I were you and you know that, okay, I have a marketing invisibility problem, pick your lane. Okay, because showing up sporadically across five different platforms is not a strategy, right? What is our top of the funnel? What's happening when people know that you exist once they find you? How are you nurturing them? And then how are you inviting them to make a sale? Okay, getting really, really clear on that. I know this is a lot. That's a lot of things. I would I would do a lot of things with my hands-out your business.

Customer Experience That Retains Clients

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Number seven is customer experience. This is often the strongest area, especially for service providers who care deeply about their work. I just joined a new gym. Okay. First day at my at my new gym, I walked in, I was the only person in there, and the person at the desk didn't even introduce herself to me. She didn't tell me her name, she didn't welcome me. I know she didn't know me, but she did not introduce herself to me. That creates, I'm gonna remember that probably forever. And fortunately for her, I'm a person that was kind of unfazed by it because I don't need that. But there's a lot of people that walk into a gym for a first time that very much need somebody to introduce them to them. Otherwise, they're probably never coming back because they're gonna like that. So for you, even if you don't own a gym and you probably don't, but you need to really think about how are you making people feel welcome? In fact, that experience that I had, truthfully, really made me reflect on my own customer experience, especially inside of the inner circle. Right. Right now, people join and they come onto a call. Well, moving forward, they're gonna join and then they're gonna have a 15-minute call with me, and then they're gonna get come into the group because I'm realizing that I don't want people to walk into the group without at least me knowing their name. I don't want that. So, really thinking about how do we improve our own customer experience? Okay, this breaks down when the experience is great, but it's not documented. So it depends entirely on the owner showing up perfectly every single time, or your team, right? If your team doesn't know how they're supposed to show up, you're not super clear on it, really, really important. Okay. You cannot scale your customer experience if you're the only one that's good at delivering it. Okay. So, what I would do in this instance is get the gold standard out of your head and into a process that your team can run, or you can automate with AI, or you can build in whatever funnels that you need to build. We'll get into systems. That's the next piece, but so much of your customer experience matters. So, this is the piece that we really dive into because this helps for retention. If your retention sucks, if you're losing clients out the back door, customer experience, you have to come back to this every single time.

Systems Triage For Backend Chaos

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Last one is systems. Okay. Back end chaos is incredibly common, and I am not a person that likes the beep boops. I don't like the tech that much. And by don't like it, I mean I don't like setting it up. But I have a team that does it for me because I'm at a stage in my business where it allows for that, and that's beautiful. But this even shows up in businesses doing multiple six figures. I've seen it, I see it all the time. Okay, the front end looks really polished, but the back end is held together with like good intentions and hopes and prayers. Okay. And this is often a really big cause of anxiety for a lot of people, especially if you have a team and a lot of moving parts and you become the person that has to constantly go in and clean up the system. So, what do I, what would I do? What I would do is I start with whatever is causing the most friction right now, not a full systems overhaul. While we probably need that in some instances, it's always like, what is how do we triage this? What is the thing that is most on fire? What is like a full-blown house fire? What's a fire that's in a dumpster right now, which is still a fire but pretty much contained, and then what is like a little bit of kindling just ablaze? Okay. We start with the full-on house fire. That is what we need to fix first. And then, you know, if you're in a position where you need a full systems overhaul, sometimes that's the reality. But you have to fix what's on fire. You deserve what you tolerate in your business. If you are allowing your systems to be a shit show and you aren't willing to address them, it's going to continue to be a shit show. And this is something that we fix. Okay.

Find The Lever That Matters Most

SPEAKER_00 17:38

So what's fun for me when I think about this, you know, this, I'll be honest, these roadmaps take me hours to work through. Um, it's not something that I can just tell AI to do for me. It is very much my brain. But every single business has a different combination of strengths and weaknesses. And that's why, you know, generic courses or templates and things like that will only get you so far. They're great up into a point. But at some stage, you do need either yourself, if you have the awareness and the ability to look at all of these areas and say, okay, I can fix this all myself with just if I just get some intentional time, or we may be in a place where we have to hire someone to do it for you or to guide you through it, right? And what I found is when you look at all of these eight areas together, a really clear picture emerges of exactly where to focus. And usually it's not where you thought. And oftentimes, and you know, I'm thinking about the roadmap I just finished, literally just before recording this, it's like, okay, I have all these things that I want to focus on. But oftentimes what it does is it creates like, okay, that's great that we have all these ideas, but we need to focus on this lowest hanging fruit one that's making you the most money right now. And then we can add these other things later. Um, and I've done that with my clients a few times, where my clients have come to me and they've said, okay, I have 17 different offers. It's like, okay, that's great. We need to focus on this offer because you're leaving the most money on the table in this place. And so that's what, you know, I personally think that's my uh absolute superpower from a business perspective. Sometimes I joke I'm a professional hole poker, but certainly, you know, it's a it's a really big part of it. So if you're listening to this and you're taking notes, good. That is the point. Okay. But I do also want to make an invitation if you're listening to this and you're thinking, I have literally no idea how I would figure all of this out myself. I don't have the answers to identifying how to create enough offers and revenue in my business. I don't know how to market customer service feels impossible. I don't know how to clean up my customer service. It's a lot, right? We're 20 minutes into this episode, and it's a lot

Ambition Mastermind Enrollment Details

SPEAKER_00 19:47

of things. And so if you're listening to this and you feel like you want me to actually do this with you, that's where the ambition mastermind comes in. And we are enrolling for ambition. I have made some changes to how I enroll Ambition. Typically, for the last five years, I've run this mastermind, which is crazy to think. And there's been different iterations of it over the last five years. And we have done it in cohorts in the past, but we're changing some of the enrollment. So as long as there's space in the mastermind, you can join the mastermind. But right now, we have open enrollment spaces because I ended a cohort at the end of March and we're enrolling. There are already women inside that are going through this process. Obviously, I've made these roadmaps, I've told you all about it. But essentially, that's how we begin. We begin with me creating this roadmap for you. So we go through this huge assessment. We spend time on the phone, we dive through it, you answer a bunch of questions for me. And then I get to kind of swim through all of the details, learn everything I can about your business to create for you a step-by-step plan to fix your time and your schedule, how you delegate in your team, whether you're experiencing personal fulfillment and actually having fun, your brand and your vision, your offers, your revenue, your marketing and your visibility, your customer experience and your systems. It's a lot of things. We spend six or 12 months together during that time. And the amount of transformation that I have seen, I have seen women triple their revenue. I have seen women triple their team. I have seen women take their entire families on vacation. I've seen women stop working on the weekends to literally just chill. The energy difference is one of the big things. Usually when people start with me in the mastermind, they're feeling some kind of way, right? They're there because they feel like they are flying a plane that's on fire and they're probably not making enough money and they're kind of all over the place. By the end of the time together and every cohort we've ever done, there has been a palpable chill on the call, which is so cool to see. They're just so much more they can breathe. And that is a huge gift. And yes, are they making more money? Absolutely they are because they have the roadmaps in place. They have the foundations built to actually run their business like a real business. And I just think that's so important. So if you want to learn more about the Ambition Mastermind, you can always send me. DM at it's Laura Sinclair. I always love getting DMs from you. The other thing you can do is go to this mothermeans business.com forward slash ambition dash mastermind. I will put the link in the show notes. You can apply there to be a part of the conversation. If you're not sure if it's for you, apply anyway. We can hop on a call. We can chat through what is going to be for you. And I would love to have the opportunity to support you and put some of these things into place for your business.

Closing Thoughts And How To Apply

SPEAKER_00 22:26

And I hope that you have an incredible day. I hope this was helpful for you. We'll see you in the next one.