Episode #155:
How to be an "Insta-Yes" in Life and Business
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After an unexpected, whirlwind adventure to Paris for the 2024 Paralympics, Caterina sits down and shares the three areas in her business that allow her to be an “insta-yes” in both life and in her business! If living a life of “yes!” and adventure is important to you and your business, you’re not going to want to miss this episode!
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Expand Your Fempire Podcast #155 Transcript
How to be an “Insta-Yes” in Life and Business
Welcome to Expand your Fempire with Caterina Rando, the podcast for women in business on a mission. Sharing ideas to support you to grow and thrive. Now here’s your host, Caterina Rando.
[00:00:27] Caterina Rando: Welcome back to another episode of the Expand Your Fempire podcast. I’m your host, Caterina Rando, and I am blissing to be with you today, perhaps more than usual.
A few months back when I was leading a training at our thriving women in business center.
Caterina Rando: We’re just about to get the party started, and I get a text from one of my clients who also has been a lifelong friend for many years.
She’s taking my [00:01:00] Thrive at Sales class and we’ve been messaging and texting over the last few weeks, talking about her business, taking about her sales, her offerings. She sends me a text and says, “Caterina I need to talk with you urgently.”
i’m thinking she wants to talk to me about a proposal or a conversation she has coming up for business. I give her a quick call because I figure it’s going to be quick before my event starts.
She says to me, “Caterina, would you like to go to Paris in four days? I have a ticket. My friend was supposed to come with me. She’s not able to come. Would you like to come?” I was an Insta yes. I asked myself in my head, “do I want to go to Paris?” The answer of course was yes. And then I said yes.
And then the [00:02:00] next thing I thought to myself was, “I have a business. I have to figure out how I can be away for a week unexpectedly at the last minute.”
The trip was amazing. It was a trip of a lifetime. We went to the Dorsey Museum. We went to the L’Orange Museum. We took a river cruise down the Seine. It was quite beautiful.
I want to tell you why I’m talking about this- because your business is supposed to be your bliss.
There are things that were already in place that allowed me to be a yes for this adventure. I want to talk with you about some of those things that you want to have in place. Yes, of course, if you get an unexpected invitation to Paris, [00:03:00] or if you decide you want to join me at the last minute for one of our cruise retreats.
Other things happen, though, too. Last minute, you might get called out of town to be with a loved one. Last minute, you might unfortunately fall ill and not able to work right in your business, even just for a few days.
Do you have things in place to support you so that your business is going to continue to run like clockwork, even when you’re not there? I’m hoping so.
The first reason I was able to be an “Insta Yes” for this unexpected getaway is because I know my numbers.
In my business, we produce something we call the Monday Report. My team runs the reports, and here are some things that we put on our Monday Report. This is every Monday.
[00:04:00] How much revenue has come in the door so far this month?
How much revenue is expected or projected to come in for the rest of the month?
How much new products or services have been sold so far this month?
And what are the projected revenues for the next 6 months in business?
At a glance, I can look at all of these numbers. And all of these numbers, in this case, told me that we are well above our minimum amount that needs to come in every month to pay our bills, to pay everyone on our team, and also to put a little money in the bank for surplus.
I’m hoping that you are running a Monday report [00:05:00] or report every two weeks on your business. Not every month and not really even every two weeks, every week is important. And here’s why…
You cannot earn more money last month. You cannot track down and put attention on people that are behind in their payments last month. You can do it this month. By the way, that’s something else we look at on the Monday report is whose payments did not go through.
Please make sure that you’re on top of this, that, you know, every, every week you’re looking at. Did everything we expected to come in, come in and that, you know, that number of what your minimum amount in the door is to pay yourself, pay your team, pay all your bills and put some money in surplus.
Do you know that number? If [00:06:00] not, please, please, please figure that out. And of course, I hope that you’re paying yourself a good amount every month. And I also hope that you are not mixing your personal expenses with your business expenses, or that you have only one account. You want two separate credit cards. You want two separate accounts for personal and business, and I know you’re super smart and you know that already, but there may be a gal listening that that is an important message for her.
The next reason why I was able to be a yes for this unexpected getaway is because I have a great team. I have a great team, and I’ve had a team for many, many years, and I’m going to tell you something. I am not the queen of managing a team. But my team Are all phenomenal at what they do, and we have had other podcast episodes [00:07:00] on having a great team. Please look for those. You can do a search on our podcast page at our website.
Caterina Rando: A great team has clarity on what their jobs are, their responsibilities, their roles. They have clarity on when they’re going to be doing what. They have clarity on what I would call the daily success practices, meaning tasks they do every day and their weekly success practices, things they do every week related to their day.
Let me tell you a little bit about my team that may give you some insight into where you can use an upgrade for your team. Angela is in charge of marketing. She Does everything marketing or she delegates everything marketing to the other marketing assistant we have right now. Amy helps with our event calendar. You can go [00:08:00] to TWIBC. com and see our event listings for many events that we are offering from the fabulous women in our community, a lot of free virtual events there to support you in your business and in your personal life.
And every two weeks we release a calendar via email so if you’re not receiving that email, you can opt in at CaterinaRando. com. We have a great open rate on that email. Amy is responsible for putting all that together.
We also have a client portal where we have all of our events listed. This is not really under marketing. It’s more under client care. And by the way, you need help on your team for that. And of course we do our workshop promotion. Angela is in charge of that. She has help from Amy.
Marketing is a big job and [00:09:00] it’s not your job. You want support with your marketing tasks from a great team member or team members to help you with that.
Julie helps me with AMP up, which is our mastermind cruise for women’s speakers, podcasters, and business leaders. Julie helps me with that. She also helps me with booking my appointments, helps me with reminders for appointments, and other tasks. And then Ebony is really great at helping us with everything in our system that we use, our CRM. And there’s a lot of emails to go out. Ebony is in charge of that. She helps me with everything to do with payments related to clients, client care, she does our onboarding calls for our clients and much more.
By the way, are you doing onboarding [00:10:00] calls for your clients or is someone on your team doing that?
I really want to encourage you to look at that as well.
Now I’ve given you a quick overview of some things my team helps me with.
What I want you to get is that the idea is that you’re doing your jobs:
speaking, in the broad sense of the word, which means you’re the one who’s guesting on podcasts. You’re the one who’s doing the workshops. You’re the one who’s going out to other groups to speak. You might be doing the Facebook lives. You’re the spokesperson of your business. That’s your job.
Then of course, unless you have a sales team, you’re in charge of the selling for your business.
And of course you’re in charge of serving your clients. You might have help with that. You’re in charge of who’s going to be served and how they’re going to be served.
And then your next job is strategy. You set the goals for your [00:11:00] business, you set the pricing, you decide when you’re going to do what.
And the last of your five jobs, and these are, of course, the five pillars to expand your FEMPIRE, is self care.
You need time for self care.
Now, why did I just remind you of your five jobs? Because I want you to get all the things that are not under those five things are not your job. The bookkeeping, updating your websites, I forgot to say Angela does all the security for our business as well. Every small business need support with their security as well, these days.
Are you having a great team that is helping you?
Now, if you’re newer in business, you might be thinking, “well, Caterina, I don’t, you know, I can’t afford this that are the other thing to have someone help me yet.” And people often ask me, where do you start?
I often recommend start with a [00:12:00] virtual assistant, even 10 hours a month in the beginning to get some of those tasks that you do over and over that are more admin or client care or email marketing related. Get some support with those first.
Caterina Rando: Then a bookkeeper is very important for your business. You want to be on top of your numbers and bookkeeping can take up a lot of your time, which means you’re not selling. Remember you got five jobs. Speaking, selling, serving your clients, strategy, and self care.
Again, you’re going to be able to be a yes when an exciting opportunity comes your way and it could be something for business. Somebody could say, “Hey, I need a speaker in Arizona next week. Can you fill in for me?” You want to be an Insta- yes, because you have a great team and because you know your numbers.
The third reason [00:13:00] I was able to be an Insta- yes for my very exciting European adventure is because I have great relationship with other trusted professionals, that I can call on to fill in for me.
Now, I was fortunate that I did not have a lot of classes this week. It was a gap week between when my Thrive at Sales class ended and the next Thrive at Sales class started. And we weren’t starting a couple of other classes for a couple of weeks.
So it was a great week, but I was doing one very important thing. I was scheduled to host a virtual retreat for one of our retreat programs. I had sent out these really fun packets to the gals in the mail with stickers that said don’t open until our virtual retreat, and I was really looking forward to it. I knew, though, I could have [00:14:00] someone that the ladies would enjoy just as much who was a part of the retreat program to run the virtual event.
And I called on my friend, my colleague, my VIP client to fill in for me. And because she’s filled in for me before I knew she would do a great job.
Do you have other professionals that you can call on to fill in for you?
If you can’t deliver a speech at the last minute. If you have an unexpected trip. If you get booked for a big important speech and you have a class scheduled at that time.
I have a few amazing women that I can bring in to teach for me at any time and I know that my clients are going to get massive value from my guest presenters.
Other [00:15:00] trusted professionals who can fill in for you is a great asset for your business.
As entrepreneurs, when we start our businesses, we often think, “Hey, now I’m going to have time freedom.” Well, I hope that you do have time freedom and that you can work when you want to work, not work when you don’t want to work.
The thing is, even when you have a great team, In my experience, you never get through your to- do list. There’s always more to do.
The thing that I want you to recognize, though, is that it’s very important that you schedule in time to be with your family. You schedule in time to be with your business girlfriends. You schedule time for rejuvenation.
These things that we’ve discussed here: knowing your numbers, Having a great team, and having other trusted professionals you can call on to fill in for you on occasion [00:16:00] is going to support you to do that.
Let me take a minute to remind you that getting away is great for your business. You have a change of environment. You get away from all the daily to- do’s. You usually have new experiences or at least you get to rest and have Relaxation or have fun. And all of these things allow you to come back to your business refreshed, renewed, Revitalized. This is why you know, I love to lead women’s retreats. I love to go on women’s retreats. As soon as I got back from Paris, the next day, I went on one of my client’s fabulous retreats for three days.
Fortunately, it was in the area, I didn’t have to jump on another airplane. And that was very revitalizing.
I’m hoping that retreats are part of your overall business success plan, because the best [00:17:00] investment you can make is in yourself.
And one of the ways I want to encourage you to invest in yourself is invest in women’s trips, women’s retreats, with other business women. Because you need great business girlfriends. You don’t even have to be talking business. But when of course you go away, you will be supporting each other and you will be talking business. Getaways with great women in business is great for your business.
You’re not spoiling yourself. You’re not being indulgent.
It’s good, smart strategy. Did you hear that? It’s a good, smart strategy. Because remember, my fabulous friend, your business is supposed to be your bliss. [00:18:00]
And if you’re not blissing in business, I want you to look at these 3 very important areas that we’ve discussed here so that you can be set up to be more proactive versus reactive in your business when opportunities present themselves.
And I’m absolutely hoping that you are including some retreats or some women business getaways in your overall plan, so that every quarter or at the very furthest every six months, you’re getting refreshed, rejuvenated, revitalized. Coming home with a new fresh perspective. And you’re going to be blissing more in your business moving forward.
This is Caterina Rando reminding you, you have massive value to bring. There is a lifetime supply of people to serve.
I’m hoping that you are out there, you are being loud and [00:19:00] proud about your massive value. You are speaking. You are inviting people to talk to you to see if you’re a good match for them so that you can serve them. That you are having great girlfriends and you’re getting away with them. Because all of these things will support you to sell more, serve more, and uplift more lives.
Again, this is Caterina Rando. Please join me for one of my upcoming free workshops. Go to my myriad of free gifts at caterinarando.com/links Connect with me on Facebook or LinkedIn. And please join our Facebook group.
I’m here to support you. My amazing community is here to support you to bliss, thrive, and uplift more people with who you are.
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Expand Your Fempire with Caterina Rando.