S2E7: What Even IS A Sustainable Business?

When it comes to building a business that flows with your life, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. That would be nice though, wouldn’t it?

In this episode we dive into what a sustainable business is and a few ways that you can build yours to be sustainable for your life.

notable tools mentioned:

Zapier- can connect multiple tools in order to build automations and workflows

Notion- a productivity tool used by many businesses, customizable to your needs

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome to the Mom Boss Like a Boss Podcast, a podcast where we talk about mom life, entrepreneurship, and everything in between. I'm your host, Taylor B., a mom of four precious boys and an entrepreneur at heart. If you've been looking for a village of like-minded people, then I think you've found the right place. I look forward to talking with you, and I can't wait to see you inside. Hello, hello. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Taylor B, and if you don't know me, I am the brand and web designer behind TB Design Loft, a brand and web design studio that helps Montrepreneurs build sustainable businesses that flow with their life instead of control their life. I'm not gonna lie to y'all, time really got away from me. It was a really busy week and I did not record on time to have this scheduled. So I'm doing this off the cuff at 6 44 in the morning today. So I'm gonna try and keep this short, sweet, and easy before my kids wake up. So today we're gonna be talking about what is a sustainable business. I keep saying it, right? I help entrepreneurs build sustainable businesses. Da da da da da da da da da da da da. What is a sustainable business? When you look up the word sustainable in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, you can go online for that, or you can get a good old-fashioned book dictionary. There are three definitions for it. And the one that is relevant to what I am referring to is able to last or continue for a long time. So basically, able to stand the test of time. Now, how does a business become sustainable? That means it can, in my my personal definition, that means it can run without the owner or the founder having to be involved in every single step and having to do every little thing. What does that usually mean? That means you delegate. That means you the business runs whether you're clocked in or not. The business runs whether you're on vacation or not. No matter what, your business is going to run, even if you are sick as a dog and can't get up and move. That's what a sustainable business is. The income does not stop, the revenue does not stop whether you're there or not. So how can you build a sustainable business? Because that sounds great, right? Can you imagine taking your kids on a vacation or going on a family vacation in general to a dream location and then your business is still running while you're there, no matter if it's a day, a week, a month, maybe you just said, you know what, we're gonna take six months and we're gonna travel the world. That sounds that sounds really nice. And I feel like that is the dream for a lot of us. Even if it's not, I want to travel all over the world, even if that's not what it is, even if it's as simple as I want my days to be free, to be present with my kids without having to worry about how are my bills going to get paid, to be able to say, let's go to the ice cream shop in the middle of the school day, just because. Now, of course, no, you shouldn't be taking your kids out of school super often just for ice cream. You know, they let them get their education first. But on the flip side of that, if you've always wanted to homeschool, but you couldn't because I have to work, these bills have to get paid one way or another, and I have to work, so I can't homeschool my child. I have to put them in in daycare, I have to put them in public school, I have to put them in private school, whatever it is. Maybe you want your kids to go to private school for a better education. There are so many scenarios where a sustainable business gives you the tools and the resources to do the things that you want to do and that benefit your family because only you know what your family needs. A sustainable business can look like anything. I know everyone has really hopped on the idea of passive income and things of that nature. We'll get into passive income in another episode, but if you think about it, passive income is not really passive. It just means you don't have to actively sell. But here's how you make a sustainable business. There's a few different options, a few different ideas. Even as a small business owner, if that's where you're at, which there's a strong possibility that you are, if it's just you, you're really going to want to go all in on systems and automations. You want to make sure that whatever can be automated, automated. I am not necessarily saying use AI because you don't have to use AI to use automations. I don't know if you guys have heard of Zapier, Zapier. I have no idea how to say it. I know how to spell it. I just don't I don't know exactly how to say it. It's Z-A-P-I-E-R. You can make a free account, and this tool connects to many different platforms so that way you can find ways to automate your business. I have an inquiry form. It's not on my website as of right now, but I have an inquiry form that when it's filled out, I automatically get a notification that someone filled it out. That person is able to set up a call and book a coffee chat, as I like to call it. They're able to book a call with me so I don't have to find the inquiry in my email and then look at the inquiry, decide if I am like, okay, yeah, I want to reach out to this person. And then I have to reach out to schedule a call. Me personally, that is not ideal. I have no problem talking to anyone, honestly. As of right now, my schedule is flexible enough that I can make it work. So I don't mind if you fill out my inquiry form and then head straight to booking a call that works with your schedule and mine. Because I use Google Calendar. I, if I recall correctly, it shows you your time zone to schedule and then it shows me my time zone to schedule. For me, that is seamless and that is so simple and easy. I love it. I prefer it because I'm on the go a lot. If I'm not tending to my kids, if I'm not out working, if I'm not inside working on my business or whatever I'm doing, or cleaning or cooking or whatever it is, I'm very busy a lot of the time. Now I may have my phone on my hand or I have a headphone in so that way I can hear notifications coming through. Yes, I prefer for you to be able to book a call right away. And then I look at it and I'm like, okay, cool. I'll make sure I'm I'm ready and I'll make sure so I'm ready so I can attend this call. That is so seamless for me. That is easy, and I prefer that. I personally do not want to receive an inquiry, have to reach out to you to figure out a best time to set up a call and then set up the call and send you the link. For me, that's a headache. It's stressed, just talking about it stressed me out. Everyone's different though. Other other designers prefer just the form and then they reach out to you if they are interested in your project. For me, I don't mind talking. Even if we're not a good fit, if I can point you in the right direction or if I can give some kind of advice or anything, I have no problem with that as of right now. That may change in the future. But as of right now, I have no problem talking to you. I would love to talk to you. I love meeting new people. That's an example of what a piece of what sustainable would look like for me. Not having to manually reach out and set up calls. That stresses me out. I would rather give you the link to my calendar and then there are certain dates blocked off for events or family things or whatever's going on and it just be automatic. That's what I mean by sustainable. You send me an inquiry, I get the inquiry, but you also are able to book a call automatically on your end without having to wait on me. I would prefer that. Because what if your your inquiry email gets lost in a bunch of notifications? That has happened to me before, where important emails got lost in notifications and I didn't see it until much later. And that's why I set it up like that. I haven't used it yet. I haven't put it on my website yet because I'm redesigning my website as part of my rebrand. But once I get it going, that's gonna be love. I also set it up with Zapier. Zapier, Zap. We're gonna call it Zap. I set it up with Zap that when someone fills out my inquiry form, it automatically adds this person and key details to my Notion CRM database that I created. I have it set up that it automatically does that. So I don't have to manually go in and add it. I just have to finish setting up my system, but it also sends me notifications because then I have automations set up in Notion that send me notifications of hey, reminder, you got an inquiry, get prepared for the call, things like that. So if it's just you, and especially if you are a busy mom trying to run a business, systems and automations are going to be your absolute best friend. I would highly recommend, even if you're not a mom, you're going to need systems and automations at some point. That is, I would say that is one universal thing that every business owner is going to need to create a sustainable business. You need things running in the background, which is part of what your website is for. If you sell products, you need people to be able to go buy your products because who wants to just being transparent, who wants to answer a DM at 1 a.m. Because, hey, I want to buy a candle. I know I don't want to do that. Like, yes, I appreciate your business, but I don't want to wake up randomly in the middle of the night just to find out what candle you want, how many you want, your address, payment information at one in the morning. I don't want to do that. I don't think anyone realistically wants to do that. So, systems and automations, which I would say another part of that is your website. Another way to make your business sustainable would be to hire people. Whenever you get to that point in your business, you're gonna want to hire people. If you make candles, we're just gonna run with the candle example. If you make candles, you can teach other people to make candles the way that you make them and the materials you use and the process you use, so that way you don't have to make candles anymore. Or if you are still making them, now you've got two people making them, or three people, or however many, so the volume is higher, and it's not as much work and as much pressure on you. You can hire somebody to label the candles after you've already made them, however, it works for you. Whatever is going to make your life easier, that is what makes your business sustainable because eventually you're going to want your business to run, whether you're there or not. And that might take time, but it also takes strategy. That's why I love doing what I do. My goal is to help you build a brand that not only looks good, but actually functions online and offline. That's why I offer branding to make it look good. Web design to make your website match and function and look good as well, of course. I also want to help people set up their systems on the back end. Set up your automations, your workflows, help you set things up so you can breathe. Because what's the one thing that we all want to do? Breathe. That's all we want to do. We just want to breathe. Like, okay, life is enough. Being an adult is enough. Being a parent is enough. We just want to breathe. Correct me if I'm wrong. And if you have any questions about how you can build a sustainable business, whether it's just you, whether you're looking to hire a team, whatever you're looking for, feel free to reach out. I am happy to answer any questions, give any suggestions, and point you in the direction of resources that I have found. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I will see you in the next one. Bye. Thanks for listening to the Mom Boss Like a Boss podcast. If you have any thoughts on the episode, please feel free to reach out to me on Threads or Instagram. You can find me at the Creative Altruist, all one word, no spaces, underscores, or periods. It'll also be right there in the description. Until next time.