Hey fellow entrepreneurs, welcome to the Buckets and Boone Gates Studio with Kim White, Jill Olish, and many other brilliant entrepreneurs. Determined to solve world problems for entrepreneurs, this community is changing how we look at the big things we do on our business adventure and sharing from their own lives ways to protect our time, money, and bandwidth. this show is designed for you the entrepreneur to hear behind the scenes stories of real business people across the globe and learn what is possible for you keep listening to join today's juicy conversation with kim and jill Welcome to the Buckets and Boomgate studio. I am Jill Olish and I am joined today by the fierce Kim White. Kim, thank you so much for joining me for our episode today. I feel like this is where I should roar if I'm fierce. I'm glad to be with you, Jill. And today we are talking about simplifying your business so it can actually scale and still feel sexy. If your business feels like a giant tangled ball of offers, tools, and to-dos, this episode is for you. Kim, I think we might have some confessions about things getting a little complicated in our businesses to share. holy moly i i giggle it all the time i thought that more was more i didn't realize more was more when we think about the people that have our you know that want our stuff We make it more and complicated. How do they know what it even is? And I have done this. I will tell you one of the mastermind groups, this is quick confession, but one of the mastermind groups I had probably fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years ago, somewhere in there, I thought they wanted more. I didn't understand. They did want more, but they wanted more simple. they didn't want more complicated and I went to a lot of trouble to do some more complicated things and basically they all tapped out and said that we can't do this and in my mind I'm thinking that's what they were asking for but I didn't stop and really listen at that point and so That to me is a good example. If I hadn't changed and made things simple again, I would have lost that whole mastermind group because they weren't asking for more complicated. I think it's very important to think about when you're dealing with any kind of clients or customers, more is more. I think it can get confusing for ourselves, too, because when I first started, I thought I had to have all of the pieces. I had to have an offer. I had to have a giveaway. I had to have a course. I had, you know, like, seventeen different things starting out of the gate. And it was not clear what I actually did. And I think that was challenging for me to muddle through that, to figure out what was my business going to be and got rid of it all and started over. Let's just share a little bit about how you can recognize if more is more in yours, if you've made things too complicated. It looks like that if you have too many bonuses, right? it looks like that if you have too many steps to get them what they need if you have too many tools too many options too many too many too many too many um because we thought more was more value and here's the problem is we can overwhelm someone else with the things we think They need all at once. So we're not saying that they don't need all the things, but they don't need them all today. They can't even implement them all today. So think about that when you're doing anything. And when you're doing a check of if you're doing too complicated, are you overwhelmed? Are they overwhelmed? Do you have a lot of stalled projects that are half done and really no motivation to finish them? That's a good sign. Are your clients confused? Are the people that you're wanting to work with, would they even pick you because they can't tell what it is you do? And are you exhausted? Because a lot of times when you're doing something that's complicated, it exhausts you. Exhaust them too, let me say that. And truthfully, complicated usually means unsustainable. That's the bottom line is if it's exhausting you now, how are you ever going to be able to keep doing it? How are you going to be able to keep doing it? Yeah. And unsustainable is not the way to build a sexy business or life at all. We want sustainable. That's part of the sexy part. That's right. Or Kim, how do we then get an idea of what we even have in our businesses to start on cluttering? If there is any clutter. So I'm going to guarantee there probably is clutter because even we, after all these years and knowing this, we still have to do this periodically. We still get excited and run too fast and, Oh, wait a minute. This is too much. We don't want to fire hose people. There are three areas I would say to edit, like to look at and to edit. And if you fit any of the things we said earlier, definitely do this. But the first one is offers. The second one is tools. And the third one is marketing and projects. So, well, you know what? I'm going to change that to four. because that projects really are a different part. So it really is offers, tools, marketing and projects. For each one of those, you need to see if, do you keep it? Is it working? Does it feel reasonably light? Does it fit your current life and goals? And I do mean life, not just business. I mean, if you're in a season, That you need to scale back a little bit. That's not the time to go full throttle. Think about those things. Do you need to tweak something? Does it have potential, but something is off about it? Maybe the boundaries aren't right. Maybe it's too long. Maybe the scope is too big. Maybe the pricing is too little or too much. It could be either. And maybe the delivery method is hard. Maybe you're doing it the hard way and they're feeling its heaviness and hard. On those same things, do you toss it or pause it? It consistently drains you. It definitely needs to be paused or stopped. You've got to make sure you are really recognizing those pain points. If it confuses your clients, think about this. They're there for a solution. And if you get them confused, how can they? How can they get that solution? And it doesn't match your current direction. So there have been different businesses in my life that I have done that I have loved, but I'm not doing today what I was doing twenty five years ago and doing something different. I'm not certainly not doing what I was doing at sixteen. It's different. So don't be afraid to be very clear and change that. But make sure you're not confusing them in the process. Keep your most aligned things, your most aligned offers or tools or projects, your marketing, whatever's profitable. Look where your money's coming in from. Where that money comes from tells you something. If you're making money every month on something, maybe you need to double down on that. Maybe you need to do a little bit more marketing for that, or maybe you need to do something, but don't make it heavy. So think about it in that way. A good offer. Sometimes we can ruin a good offer with more, with more. Well, let's leave it at that with more. We can ruin, you know, something that feels simple for somebody to say, yes, I need this by adding other things that, you know, here's your bonus set of steak knives. What is the steak knife has to do with the service they're needing from you? um and that's just a silly throwback sorry um but sometimes you need to get rid of old offers sometimes there's something that you really don't want to do anymore i actually had this experience not long ago i had something that i told my husband i'm not sure why i keep doing this i don't want to do this and i'm done with doing this however i keep saying yes And so he, like, because I'm a verbal processor, he laughed and said, well, why don't you just stop? Why don't you put it on pause and make sure you're really going to do it? For the tools that we have, are you actually using them? Are they saving you time? Are they saving you money? Are they saving you from something? Because if a tool is just there to... make you be able to tell someone else you need to stop doing it for that reason. Maybe you need to downgrade a plan. We did this not long ago. We were paying for a whole lot of hours that we were not using of a tool. We just downgraded it. We still use it some, but we didn't use it near what we did when we first got it. Simplify the setups of the tools. Do you have the process written down so that you can hand it off to someone? A tool can be used by others. Get rid of those subscriptions that you forgot about, tools you only use because of the FOMO. You know, if everybody at the table is saying, oh, I have this and I have this. Is that what you are worried about? Or are you worried about having a successful business? Because if you're wasting money on things, you're wasting, wasting, wasting, wasting. You can get yourself a raise as a business owner by deleting some of those subscriptions, some of those tools. And there is an old episode of this where Carrie Zarb, who she and I were the ones that started the podcast, like, What was it, three years ago, four years ago, Jill? She talks a lot about this, you know, subscription thing. So I think it's worth listening to again. And your marketing. If you know who you're marketing to, be simple with it because brilliant people can understand simple things easily. We think that we will feel more, you know, more important or more professional or more inviting or more what, see, more again is the theme song. We think we're going to be more by doing bigger, fancier things when actually simple is what sells. Does it feel heavy to you? It probably feels heavy to them. Marketing, change your frequency if you need to. Don't... Every day, do every week. Don't do like major things that are going to cost you all your bandwidth and you don't have anything for your clients. I think that's one of the biggest things I see is people will go out and do huge marketing things and they forget the ones they already have. Don't do that. Channels that don't bring up good feelings, that don't move the needle, get rid of them. Just get rid of them. So those are my those are my things, Jello, for right now. There's so many facets of her business components that we can work on here. I know it's a lot, but we did talk a little bit about this in episode one hundred eleven in marketing that feels like you know, we don't have to do it all. It is OK to have permission to do one thing at a time. And definitely not all at the same time. That's overwhelming. So Kim, simple is a word that you use a lot. How do we do simple here with these things? So first confession out of the gate, we both, you know, said we, we have to go back and pare down also. This is something that we do periodically because all of us can do this. So if you're, if you've done something, you know, it's too big. Don't, like you're alone i want to say that give yourself permission to make things simpler maybe you put something really big out into the world and it feels big to everybody and nobody's buying it maybe it's because it's too big to buy and not price wise it's not simple enough for them to implement and get their own win think of it that way if it's so big and complicated they can't get a win why would they buy it um fear the fear that comes up from from you know having something not be simpler is It's going to look less professional if it's simple. That is the opposite of the truth. The more simple you can make it, the more money you can make, the more professional you can look. There are good things that come out of being simpler. It converts better. Someone who understands clearly that that is what they need pushes the buttons. Someone who says, oh, I don't know. I don't even know if I could do that. They're not going to push the button. It's easier to run. It's easier for you to take care of something simple that doesn't have twenty seven steps to just get somebody in to whatever it is you're you're selling. And it supports a sexy life. Anything simple that can convert and be easier for your customers or your clients, guess what? That makes it easier for you, which gives you more time to work on the things that really matter. So less complicated is huge. It is a huge thing. It's a mental mind shift, though. is a mindset for us to believe it um i can i will say i felt a lot of relief whenever i figured this out because when i was making it complicated i was confused by why everybody wasn't lined up why were this they're not a line around the corner for something Because look, I'm giving you everything. I'm giving you this and this and this and this and this. They didn't even know what all that meant yet. They weren't far enough along in business to even know they needed it, let alone now I'm fire hosing them with it. So I can remember standing on a stage years ago when the light bulb went off for a second and I only offered the first part of it. I had a line signing up. i had i was standing at the table after i came off stage there was a line of people waiting to sign up and it was like why didn't i do this sooner why was i stressing so much about the other when it really gave me this simple simple cells my best reality check for this in that simple cells was um kim you had conversation with me and the co host of my other podcast mucked up my self care. And what we were going to be able to offer a new mom or a family member who's listening and who needs self care. And we wanted to do this whole big, really pretty, like downloadable and have a website page for it and all these things of how to do simple self care. But That wasn't the simplest way to even access that. And we had to dial it back and put ourselves back in our shoes back when we needed self-care help. How would we have wanted to get that help? And that's the same kind of way. Like if you're offering a solution, we're so wrapped up in our problem. We can't get through unless it's super simple to figure out how to solve that problem. So that's my my reality check for me that I keep in my mind when I'm trying to put something out there for someone who has a problem that I'm trying to help solve. You made a huge point there, Jill, about the if somebody's, you know, deep in a problem that we have a solution for. You are very right. That problem is loud. Problem is like consuming us when we're trying to find an answer. So we get too complicated. We can't even pick that because we don't, we can't like, it's like, I feel like it's almost physically impossible to come through a place of having that problem and then picking something that's complicated. That looks like another problem. You're right. We create it thinking it's going to be beautiful and helpful. And we just we got to sit back and remember what if we're in their shoes, what's going to help us pick it. And you are so right. Simple sells. It's such a great reminder that we don't have to keep up with the Joneses, as they say. Also. I think we can still have simple things that are simple and make a big impact for others, especially build a sexy business and life. And we want you to walk away with a win, not just have us ramble on in your ear as you're listening. So Kim, what can we do today? Well, I think today it's about the planning. I think I keep going back to the planning part. That seems to be the theme song right now. But the planning of what can you do for one simple thing? So your sexy homework equals one thing. You can say that almost every week. But that one thing is, can you get rid of something that's complicated? And I don't care if it falls in whichever category. can you make one simple decision to either get rid of something that's complicated pare it down cancel a tool you're not using reduce your marketing you know heaviness any of those things are part of this homework so nothing is off limits if something is complicated is the is the the thing you're looking for, what feels complicated, what are you feeling heavy about, write it down. You may not be able to do it right at this very moment, but if you write that down so that you remember that was what came up when you thought about the heavy things and you thought about the complicated things, I think that is a huge win for today. If you know what you're going to address, maybe you're going to pare back it makes me want to go through everything we have having this conversation and do it again right like uncomplicate things even more because it is it is complicated i can tell you you know our community our free community It was complicated at one point. We've uncomplicated it. If you want to come to any of our free events, and this is for you, sweet listener. If you do want to come to any of our events, all you have to do is come into the community. They're all there. You can see the meetups. You can see the things that you can participate in. If you stay a free community member for life and never purchase anything from us, we don't care. We're okay with that. We want you to be part of the community because this community is making an impact. But you know what? If we make that complicated, people are not going to want to come in the community. They're not going to want to come and join us because what are we about? I will tell you our community is a home for entrepreneurs. That was one of the things we uncomplicated. What was our community about? It was about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like long, long sentences and lists. Truth is, it's a home for entrepreneurs. If you're an entrepreneur or business owner, it's for you. That's as simple as we can get it. And I think that that's what you have to do on your list today. Your sexy homework is about finding that thing on your business list that is too complicated and start sexying it up by making it simpler. Love it. Love it. So let's recap a little bit. Simplicity is not laziness. It's leadership. We are... We're making changes. We don't need to have big fancy things. It needs to be simple so we can understand it. Sexy business equals simple. It's sustainable. It's supportive, not just for us, but for who we're trying to help also. And tell us what you simplified this week. Share it with a friend. We've been talking a lot about sharing with people to our accountability and We can be your accountability partner in this. Let us know what you simplified. Come join the community. Seriously. Yeah. There's a lot of people that would love to hear what you simplified because maybe they need to simplify it. Yeah. Love that. So if this helped share this episode with one business friend who could benefit from this, from working this all into my goodness, from simplifying a little bit more in their business, because like we said, everyone's going to need a little bit more simple to sell more. So next time we are talking about your support squad. So join us for that one to learn what that means. And thank you so much for listening in because we could not make this podcast better without you. So we hope to see you next time. Love y'all. Thank you for joining Kim and Jill in the Buckets and Boomgate studio for today's conversation. Don't forget to follow the show for future juicy episodes, and they can't wait to chat with you next week.
