Beyond The Clinic

071 Behind the Scenes of My Summer Reset: What I’m Changing in My Business

• Sarah Almond Bushell

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Welcome to the final episode of our Summer Reset series! In this special behind-the-scenes episode, I’m opening the doors to what’s actually shifting inside my business. After guiding you through five weeks of gentle reflection and intentional planning, I’m walking my talk and taking you inside the exact refinements, automations, and mindset resets I’ve made this season.

From retiring a social media team (and why that decision felt like taking off a heavy coat) to embracing custom GPTs and ManyChat automations, I’m sharing what I’m keeping, dropping, delegating and streamlining - all in service of running a values-aligned business that supports my life and my clients.

If you’ve been craving simplicity, structure, and space to think again… this one’s for you.

🔗 Useful Links:

✨ In This Episode, I Share:

  • What I’m refining in my business (think: funnels + automation tools that work)
  • Why I let go of my social media team - and what’s coming next instead
  • How I’ve embraced automation (including 12 custom GPTs!) without losing my unique voice
  • What I’m delegating this season to protect my energy and stay in my zone of genius
  • The mindset shifts that brought my creativity back, and how I’m protecting it moving into Q4
  • A peek at what’s next in both my businesses (hello new app + program plans!)

🧭 Ready to Reset Your Business Too?
If this episode sparked ideas or clarity, and you’re ready to step into the next phase of your business with real support — come explore Accelerate. It’s the business mentorship for regulated health professionals ready to grow in a values-led, sustainable way.

👉 Learn more here

I'd love to hear from you, click the link to 'text' the show directly

Lets keep in touch!

Website: https://www.sarahalmondbushell.com/
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YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BeyondTheClinicPodcast


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Sarah Bushell (00:00)

Hello, hello, and welcome back to Beyond the Clinic. This is our last episode of our summer reset series because we're in September. And it's a special one because I'm going to bring you behind the scenes of what I'm doing in my business. So over the past five episodes, we've worked through so much together. We've started with a gentle reflection and a mid-year check-in. we've cleared the fog with Clarity Frameworks.


and I've given you a simple yet powerful CEO planning ritual. We've talked through what I'd do differently if I was starting from scratch. And last week we prepped your plan for a focused and feel good autumn. So today I thought I'd show you what this reset actually looks like for me, because yes, I walk my talk. I'm going through this process right alongside you.


Before we dive in, just a quick reminder, if you haven't already grabbed the Summer Reset Planner, it's the free guide that accompanies this entire series. And it includes reflection prompts and space to jot down your thoughts and frameworks to help you take action, including today's episode. You can find the link in the show notes or if you're watching on YouTube, it'll be under the video there too. So over the past five episodes,


You've done the work of identifying what to keep, what to evolve and what to let go. So I thought I'd share what that looks like behind the scenes in my world, how I've taken my own keep, kill, evolve list and turned it into action. What I'm refining, what I'm dropping, what I'm automating and what I'm delegating this summer. And I hope this episode helps you feel less alone, that it shows you that it isn't about having it all figured out.


It's about tuning into what's going on in your business, making decisions and leading your business in a way that feels purposeful and spacious. So brew your coffee or pop in your headphones and go for a walk and let's have a behind the scenes chat about what I'm changing this summer and why.


Okay, let's start with what I'm refining. So you know that drawer that we all have in our kitchens, the one that's full of half used birthday candles and a rogue takeaway menu from 2003 and a packet of batteries that may or may not work, you know, that kind of thing. Well, that's what some of the sales funnels in my business have felt like. So this summer I've been refining them.


I've been dusting off existing assets, checking they're still up to date and useful for people. I've been sharpening the edges and I've been finally joining the dots between lead magnets and offers that I already had. I'm creating what we call some new front end funnels, front end because they bring brand new people into my world, but I'm not starting from scratch. I'm taking those freebies and those low cost offers that were already just hanging out in my business like mismatched socks.


and pairing them together into self liquidating funnels. So essentially I'm making a few sales that continue to fund the ads that bring the new leads in and grow my audience. Why? Because while the freebie content was great, the path to what comes next for people wasn't a hundred percent clear. It was almost like I was inviting people to a party, but forgetting to give them the address.


I was also spending way too much time in my DMs. Now I love a good voice note, but let's just say it was edging on to audiobook territory here. It wasn't scalable. It wasn't sustainable in terms of my time. And frankly, it was making me feel a bit charred at the edges in terms of my motivation. You already know I'm not the biggest fan of social media. So this very quickly felt like a chore. So I'm optimizing with many chat.


So if you don't know, it's an Instagram approved automation tool that handles the DMs, those early funnel conversations. It delivers the freebie, it collects their name and their email address, it adds them to my email service provider kit, and it also answers some of the FAQs I get. And I've also set up some automations to gently guide conversations to the point of the next step towards working with me.


I feel like I have cloned the helpful version of myself and trained her up in exceptional customer services and then left her to take care of all the new people at the top of the funnel while I focus on bigger picture strategy. And let's be real, putting together podcast episodes like this one in my garden with a cold drink. But the bigger goal is to have a consistent flow of happy, looked after new leads brought into my business on autopilot.


people who find me, who get help immediately and naturally flow into my live launches or my higher ticket programs. It feels cleaner. And actually I feel like I've tidied up that kitchen drawer.


Okay, moving on to the second thing, the things that I'm dropping, I'm letting go of. So take a deep breath. This one was a big one for me. So this summer I made the decision to let go of my social media team and it really wasn't an easy choice. They were amazing people to work with. I loved working with them, but I noticed that my Instagram reach had plummeted. My engagement was


tepid and when I saw a post go live I sometimes thought wait is that me? It didn't sound like me, sometimes it didn't feel like me and if I couldn't recognise my own voice how could my audience connect with that? So after a few months of editing what they created and refining ideas I thought it's probably time to pull the plug. Honestly it felt like shrugging off a really heavy coat that I didn't realise that I was wearing and one that cost me an


absolute fortune every single month and it didn't really fit properly. Now at the same time I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous about this because now this means I have to do the work again. I've got to generate the ideas, I've got to create the content and the captions but there's also a little spark of excitement, a flicker of the joy I used to feel when I wrote my content directly from the heart. I'm looking forward to connecting with my people again.


So that I'm back on that frontline. So I've got a bit of a game plan for this and I'll explain a bit more in a moment. And honestly, I think it's what my audience needs. So part three, what am I automating? I'm going to tell you about my newest love language and it's AI and automation. So here's what I've started doing a lot more of this summer. So I've told you about many chat automations I'm using at the top of my funnels in my social media. I'm also


batch creating in Canva. So I've discovered how to create a lot of B-roll style reels in one go. And now I have a monthly social media content creation day where I just make it all in one go. I'm also obsessed with custom GPTs. So this is chat GPTs that you can create yourself. And I've built 12 of them so far. Yes, 12 AI tools, each one acting like a little assistant with really specific roles.


I've got one that does admin, one that helps with content, one for customer services, one that writes emails, one that helps me create all the assets I need to share when my podcast episodes go live. And I've fine tuned them so they know all about you guys, as well as how I talk and my sense of humor. So you should never get emails that sound like a robot who drank too much coffee. But one of the biggest game changes for me is I learned how to do an AI photo shoot and video shoot.


So what this means is I'm never short of any on-brand visuals for any of my marketing. And you know what? This all gives me space. I can show up more, I can help more, I can give more value to the people in my audience without needing to invest any extra time or money. I sit down to work and I know exactly what needs doing. My AI CEO tells me what's on the agenda.


My canva is uploaded with branded graphics and my Instagram inbox does not make me want to cry. Honestly, I wish this stuff existed years ago because business would have been so much easier for me if it did. But I'm here now and I'm taking advantage of all that tech has to offer and I am embracing it.


Also, automation isn't just about working less. It's about removing decision fatigue. It's about freeing up your brain space for real thinking, the strategic stuff,


stuff that actually helps your business continue to grow. And also as a bit of a bonus here, I'm saving a lot of money by not outsourcing tasks that now just take me minutes. Okay. What am I delegating? So I have to say, I'm a big fan of delegation.


And I always have been in my NHS manager days. I used to have to delegate a lot. It trained me well, but this summer I leaned even more into it. So I have a team of VA's who do a bit of work for me and I've asked them to take over tasks that I would usually do myself, but you know what? I don't need to because just because you can doesn't mean you should. Right? So I had this exact experience with this podcast actually.


For the first year I had Jo from Audio and Co producing it for me and she did a fantastic job. I highly recommend her if you're thinking about podcasting. Anyway, during that year, my team was growing and it made sense to take the podcast production and marketing in-house. And then of course my team changed, the person who was responsible for that left and the work was left for me to pick up. So after a brief detour into solo podcast producing, I'm bringing in someone to help again.


Producing this show is a joy. It's techy and I love tech, but it does take time. And while I loved having control over every part of the process, because yes, I am that person as well, I also really value my time. The great thing, having done it all myself first, I know exactly what I want. I know exactly the type of support I need and I've created ridiculously detailed SOPs with video walkthroughs


So we are ready to go once we find the right person. So delegation has allowed me to step out of being the bottleneck that I had become in my own business. And it let me stay in my zone of genius. It's all about letting go and know what my energy is best spent on.


Okay, and the fifth thing is my energy


mindset. So here's what I didn't expect to happen. I actually started working later and later in the day. Now, as a rule, I never work in the evenings. I did when I first went into the online space because my audience were parents and that's when they were around and I just found it draining. But without the structure of the school runs over this summer and the fixed commitments that I usually have, my day just began to stretch. So...


4pm, blurred to dinner happened late, the dog pouring at my chair asking for his walk and that became my unofficial timekeeper. So I am someone who hyper focuses once I get into a project that I'm enjoying, I become time blind. And while I could justify it because it's only just one more email, I started to feel really foggy. I started to feel tired. started to get a bit blurry eyed and I was gagging for the weekends. And so


I decided I had to hit reset. So now I stop at about 4, 4.30 PM, I walk the dog on the beach with my husband. I sit on the sofa with my kids. We prepare and eat a family dinner together. I actually watch a film in the evenings instead of falling asleep on the sofa at 9.30 PM. And guess what? My brain came back. My creative ideas started flowing. My energy levels resumed normal.


and I've got to have more quality time with my family.


Okay, so what's next? What am I looking out for Q4? So looking ahead to the autumn, I'm actually buzzing a little bit with excitement because here's what's on the horizon for me. So I'm launching an app in my paediatric nutrition business. This has been a work in progress for over a year now. It's going to be a free community for parents who want support with feeding their children. Of course, it's part of my strategy to increase


the sales of my courses and my membership. And I can't wait to see how it all goes. And I've also just secured a trademark for a brand new program name in this business. Now I won't be launching anything until well into the new year, but I'm knee deep in the fun part, the vision casting, the planning, the mapping, the doing the market research with people I love to work with. So all I can say is watch this space. But for the first time in ages, I feel like I have


actual space, space to think and dream and create. A lot of creativity come from this and it's not because I cleared out my schedule, it's because I cleared the clutter and actually I think that's what I want for you as well.


So that's my behind the scenes of my summer reset. And I hope it's really helped you with some ideas of what you might want to be doing in your business. So here are my key takeaways from this whole series, just in case you need them. So your business isn't set in stone. It can and it should actually evolve. Dropping something doesn't mean you failed. It means you're making room for fresh ideas. Automate and delegate wherever you can.


You and your brain are not machines. Tech is there to support us. And with the right guidance, it really doesn't need to be scary. And take up space. Make it easier on yourself. If you're the bottleneck in your business growth, that's a clue on what to do. It's not a criticism. This whole series has been about helping you gently reflect, helping you clear space and reset. And I really hope it's helped. And if you're ready to go deeper,


to implement this with real support and get serious about growing your business, then I'd love to chat to you about Accelerate, my business coaching program. It's personalized. There's no one size fits all approach. We take your ideas and your plans and we create a strategy for you so that they become the business of your dreams. And so all that's left for me to say is what are you refining? What are you dropping?


What are you automating or delegating? Thank you so much for spending your summer with me and I will see you again next week. Bye for now.

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Sarah Almond Bushell

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