Welcome to episode 18 of Creative Collaboration: Conversations with Veronica and Jillian. In this episode, Veronica and Jillian delve into the pivotal strategy of working ON, rather than just in, businesses, stressing regular evaluations and strategic planning. They advocate for quarterly business reviews, emphasizing data-driven decision-making, resource reallocation, and clear goal-setting. The conversation underlines the significance of analyzing sales cycles, energy optimization, time management, and maintaining consistency to drive productivity and success in entrepreneurial endeavors.
Today Veronica and Jillian Vorce discuss the topic of working ON your business instead of in it. They emphasize the importance of dedicating time to evaluate and strategize for their businesses. The conversation also touches on challenges faced by entrepreneurs and the need to adapt to changes in the business environment. Quarterly business reviews are suggested as a way to stay on track with objectives throughout the year.
Jillian Vorce emphasizes the importance of collecting data to assess productivity levels, prospects, and opportunities. She suggests reallocating resources quarterly and highlights the need for capacity management during unexpected acquisition opportunities. It is recommended to conduct an annual analysis of goals and measurements to determine if objectives are being met. Veronica Guguian emphasizes the need for clarity in measuring success, such as determining client capacity, processes in place, availability, and resources.
They discuss the importance of analyzing sales cycles and conversion rates to be proactive in business decision-making. Both speakers stress the significance of analyzing numbers and setting clear goals aligned with values to make informed decisions about opportunities presented. The transcript also touches on delegation, time management, energy optimization by focusing on tasks that give energy rather than drain it out. Leveraging data is essential for making better decisions in business growth strategies.
Jillian Vorce discusses the importance of allocating time and managing profit in client engagements. She emphasizes the need to understand how much time is required for each task and how it aligns with personal goals. Veronica Guguian shares her own experience of prioritizing tasks, creating a to-do list, and valuing time. They both discuss the significance of being strict with time management and creating non-negotiable blocks on calendars. Different tools like digital apps or pen-and-paper methods are mentioned as helpful ways to track and manage tasks effectively. The speakers also highlight the importance of consistency, decisiveness, and avoiding procrastination in order to be productive.
Jillian Vorce discusses the importance of structuring time and using separate calendar links for different types of meetings. She also emphasizes the benefits of shorter, more productive meetings. Veronica Guguian adds that accountability partners and mastermind groups can be helpful in staying focused on business goals. They both agree that having mentors or advisors who are ahead in their careers is valuable for learning and growth. They also mention the importance of giving back to others by mentoring those who are just starting out. Additionally, they discuss the need for honest feedback from both cheerleaders and critics to continue improving. Getting a coach or consultant can provide guidance when feeling lost or lacking passion in business. Finally, they highlight the significance of small tweaks and taking action to work on one's business rather than just in it.
People & Resources Mentioned in This Episode
About Veronica Guguian
- Website: https://spinideas.nl/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/veronica-guguian
About Jillian Vorce
- Website: https://thejilliangroup.com/better
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillianvorce
Credits
- Music Composed by BeeLa Music
- Voiceover by Amanda Balagur
Jillian Vorce: Hello and welcome to Episode number 18 of Creative Collaboration Conversations with Veronica and Jillian. And I am Jillian.
Veronica Guguian: And I'm Veronica.
Jillian Vorce: Hello.
Veronica Guguian: Can you believe it's episode 18? Oh gosh.
Jillian Vorce: I know.
Veronica Guguian: Time flies.
Jillian Vorce: It's a big deal. We're approaching the Big 20. Woohoo. Yeah.
Veronica Guguian: Oh my gosh.
Jillian Vorce: So what's today's topic? What are we going to chat about?
Veronica Guguian: I was about to launch the same question, but you just back onto my card.
Jillian Vorce: Yeah.
Veronica Guguian: Apologies. A very important topic, especially for small entrepreneurs. But big ones as well. So today we are talking about working on your business instead of in your business. Very important. And I have to admit I was guilty, especially with my first business and also with the second one. But in the first year or two, not really recognizing the difference because when you are working, actually when you have your own business, you don't realize what is in and on. And there are so many small things that require your attention that it's overwhelming.
Jillian Vorce: Yes.
Veronica Guguian: So our attempt today with this episode will be to just clarify the difference and provide some tips on how to do that and why. Actually, I think this is the most important. Why is that beneficial and must be a priority? Not the second thought or yeah, we'll do it. Whenever. But what's your intake? Are you working on your business or.
Jillian Vorce: In your business at the moment? But just to quickly tie back to our previous episode, I think it kind of set the table for this conversation because it's a very typical process for businesses to kind of ride the wave of new business acquisition and then just work on that. And then when it's like, I don't want to say you run it into the ground, but when the engagement is complete, to then feel like, oh, no, and then start the whole process all over again and always start from scratch.
Veronica Guguian: Continuously building.
Jillian Vorce: It creates this erratic feast or famine situation. So you hear from a lot of business owners. One of the primary reasons business owners will leave their business and go back to traditional employment is for consistency 's sake. And so that is something that there's a lot of, obviously, validity to that, but it is also something that we can be a little bit more diligent about to proactively create in our businesses, right. Or at least increase the likelihood of it, put ourselves in a position to have consistent income. And so it's doing the opposite of that feast or famine thing. And that's where that delineation is of working in the business, if you're servicing clients, you're working on the deliverables.
Jillian Vorce: But it's a really important step to also make sure routinely, every single week or it's scheduled in, to take a step back from the work that we're doing, the client service work or customer service, whatever it is, creating our product or thing, taking a step back and looking at our overall business, the objectives where we're at, kind of look under the hood a little bit to see do we have a pipeline of opportunities? Are we delivering well, et cetera. Check our numbers. It's a really important piece to do that. And I think this is one of the most shied away from pieces or just flat out ignored for a lot, because, and I have seen this in my almost 20 years working with businesses. It's a very typical thing for business owners.
Jillian Vorce: Often a business owner is great at their craft, starts to do their thing and is successful. And in order to manage that success, start to hire some other people. And next thing you know, you have a team of three or five or twelve, and now you're trying to do your thing still. But now you've got all these people to manage for a number of people, they really actually love their craft, not as much about running the business. So that's another important piece in here, which is not necessarily the topic for today, but it's highly relevant. So maybe we'll just table that for a future chat or episode. But in any topic.
Jillian Vorce: Yeah, I think it is so critical to be able to, like you said, Veronica, to delineate the difference between what activities are working in the business and what activities are working on the business. And to make sure that the working on the business finds its way into our calendar routinely.
Veronica Guguian: And I think it's very important to do that also to have a check in with you. I'm counting on you to give me the number of the episode. I'm the worst at this. When we discussed falling in and out of love with your business, number 16. Thank you so much. Because that is very important when you do this, working on your business, you see what is working, what is not working, what do you need to change, what do you need to adapt? Because as you said, a lot of entrepreneurs started their own journey, entrepreneurial journey, because they love the craft. But being a business owner or entrepreneur, I don't even know which words apply. A founder, business owner, entrepreneur actually implies so much more than just doing what you're good at. And you need so many heads to be switched during one day.
Veronica Guguian: It can be overwhelming. And I'm always saying entrepreneurship is not a job, it's actually a lifestyle because you can't switch it. At the end of the day, it's consistent, it's always happening. And you can actually go to the grocery store and meet someone. Actually I met clients while walking my dog and you are talking about dogs or whatever and then you start having a conversation about people.
Jillian Vorce: Well, they brought it up. Look at them, not me.
Veronica Guguian: It's not that you are actually selling, it's purely because it's part of who you are, it's part of your identity. And it just comes out in a different situation when of course you're not going to go and start talking about your business with someone that is not interested. So don't push it to people. But if it comes, it will be there. So that means you also need to spend that time and see are you still happy or do you need to change something? And we are always growing. So you do need to adapt to what is happening and you do need to adapt to what is happening in your environment. From a political, economical point of view, social point of view, is your service still relevant? Did your audience change? Can they still afford your service? Or maybe you don't want to work with that audience.
Veronica Guguian: Maybe you want to change things. So all of those come into place when you're working on your business, so you do need to take a step back and basically look at your strategy. And in my perspective, you do need to do this at least once a year when you do your planning or strategy or setting up goals, resolution, or however you want to call them. And that's a great moment to take that step back and have that helicopter view.
Jillian Vorce: Yeah, I think so, for sure. What I typically do with clients is a quarterly business review. So we will generally have the overall objectives for the year, but then touching base on it quarterly to be able to figure out, are we off track, are we not also to see sometimes your plans for the year change because of some new technology that comes out or something happens in COVID or whatever things, life happens, right. And everything can change on a dime. So if we wait too long, we've kind of missed the opportunity.
Jillian Vorce: And also, again, if we have the infrastructure set up and the mechanisms to collect some data about what we're doing in terms of how we're spending our time, where are the prospects coming from, what's going on with our team or our staff, their productivity levels, like some of these high level pieces, if you're not capturing that, it's going to be hard to figure out and put your finger on what's working, what's not, et cetera. What other resources do you have? How can you relocate them? So I think doing that quarterly is a really important thing to be able to assess where we are at. Also, sometimes new opportunities can emerge that you weren't expecting. You might get invited to speak somewhere or you might have a neighbor move in and now have this great new opportunity. Or like, who knows?
Jillian Vorce: Your city might be looking for people to facilitate something. I mean, all these things can happen. Business happens in real time. So to make sure you're positioned to be able to, I had a client we worked with for a number of years, like six, seven years, actually. And so we were working on their annual kind of strategy planning, and then midway through the year, almost midway through the year, an acquisition opportunity emerged. So when that happens, suddenly, that's a big one. We can't wait till the end of the year to figure that out. So we have to quickly look at capacity management, et cetera, and how we're going to blend the two and all the things that happen with an acquisition. So anyways, I would say a bare bones minimum.
Jillian Vorce: Like, if you're not doing it at all, at least do it once a year, and probably today is a good day to do it. When's the right time? Now exactly.
Veronica Guguian: Yeah.
Jillian Vorce: By the time this episode drops, it'll be almost the end of the year. So this is a perfect time to spend the end of the year. They're a very early part of 2024, putting together your plan. And the plan should include three to five things that you can measure. It's not just, I want to help more people or I want to have an impact. It's like, great. How are you going to determine if you've met your objective?
Veronica Guguian: Thank you so much. Thank you for bringing this up. Because always when you meet someone, they will say, I want more clients. I haven't met a client or prospect or a person. Not saying that, but how do you measure that? How many clients? What's your capacity? What are the processes that you have in place? Are you able to provide the same level of quality to all of them? How many hours do you need to spend for each client? So what's your availability? What are your resources? And if you don't work on your business and create the right processes, you are not able to do that. And I do agree that you do need more check in moments. So if an opportunity comes, then you need to stop and look at your business. Start working on your business.
Veronica Guguian: But at least once a year, you need to get, I think a lot of people call them retreats or team buildings or whatever, you name it, how you want. The core of it is you do need to analyze what is happening, look at the numbers and see what you want.
Jillian Vorce: Yes, absolutely. And it's also part of it is looking at what your pipeline looks like, what opportunities are there, and beginning to learn your sales cycle. It's like for a lot of business owners, they feel like, I don't like that, but it's important. And everybody stop being afraid. No, I know, but everybody's unique because their business situation is very. I know, we all are unique. Right. However, it's also true for us to begin to learn what the average sales cycle is like, if somebody first finds out about you or your product or your service, whatever your thing is, when do they become a paying client? Is that a one week thing? Is it one day, 1 hour? Or is it a year long? What is it? So you have some sort of an idea.
Jillian Vorce: And also it's like for every ten kinds of Sales conversations you're having, how many of them are converting and becoming a new customer or client? It really all comes down to math at the end of the day, hence my board here. Yeah, it's largely math. So you want to be able to know those things. That puts you in a position to be more proactive with your business. So then when you're doing your QBR, you can look at. Okay, so do we have anything in the pipeline department? If you know that you need 15 conversations to get one new piece of business, and you look in your pipeline and you only have six, then you have a situation.
Veronica Guguian: So you should make sure you show resources.
Jillian Vorce: Exactly. Yeah. So it's really important to look at those pieces.
Veronica Guguian: I'm so happy you're bringing this up because I'm only saying it, and it's so simple. It's reverse engineering.
Jillian Vorce: It is reverse engineering.
Veronica Guguian: It is.
Jillian Vorce: And I love this part. If you can't tell. What was I going to say? Yeah, so I love this part. I forgot what I was going to say. Anyway,
Veronica Guguian: I got excited about the topic and I interrupted you. I'm sorry.
Jillian Vorce: No, it's okay. It was probably super important what I was going to say. Okay, so what do we have here? Yeah, so doing your QBR, that's an important one. So that's an example of working on your business. And you also had kind of talked about the previous episode about falling in and out of love with your business. So another part of it is to look at how you are spending your time. What are the things that need to get done that maybe you're dragging your feet on or you don't really love to do? And how can you either delegate those things or outsource those things?
Jillian Vorce: So that's an important part of staying on top of your time, but also your energy and the things that are giving you energy versus sucking the life out of you, like the things that suck the life out of us. Let's try to do less of those things whenever possible.
Veronica Guguian: And I think it's also a good moment to stay. You mentioned opportunities. Maybe also look to what, instead of looking at opportunities coming to you, looking at what is happening? And do I want to make those my opportunities for myself or my business or not? And this is why one of the steps, step three from my methodology, is actually setting up goals. Because we tend to go for any new technology or shiny object or opportunities thrown our way or request without really aligning them with our mission and values. And do they make sense for what we need?
Veronica Guguian: But if you have these goals and you stop, as you say, quarterly, and you look at them, then, you know, or even not even quarterly, that can be even on weekly basis, it's easier for you to determine, yes, I do want to take this on or no, I need to, not to do that, but if you don't have, as you said, the clarity in terms of numbers, resources, you don't know what to do.
Jillian Vorce: Absolutely.
Veronica Guguian: The pipeline, right? Do I need to speak more? Do I need to write more? Do I need to go and network and meet people? And we spoke, I think, about the last Episode 17 about business development.
Jillian Vorce: Right?
Veronica Guguian: Do I need to go and shake hands or not? It's all connected. You can't really take out an element. It's like an organism. Think about our body, for example. Probably you can function, but you do need help. Like, let's say you are missing a hand. You could still do a lot of things, but you do need help. So the same, you don't want to do sales because you hate them. Then you do need to bring an external party to do that, or you don't want to do a specific activity, delegate, exactly like you said. But until you don't identify what is missing, you can't do that.
Jillian Vorce: Absolutely. To me, I think it feels like there's lots of frameworks we can use to scale our companies or to grow and all of these things, depending on what that means to you. But I think just a starting point is whenever possible, to put ourselves in a position to make the best decisions we can for ourselves and for our business. And one way we can do that is by leveraging data. And so looking at things like if we take the time to go through and identify, what are the things that we can assign a numerical value to in our business, because those are easier to compute, right? So if you can identify those things, I would say an example like for myself, just trying to keep it simple.
Jillian Vorce: So there are some things I have in which a price tag is like €$250, whatever currency we're going to say. So $250. So that's fine. So if I'm going to look at those, how many of those I have to also look at. So what is my actual profit margin on that? How much time goes into that? Does that set the table for future sales? Is there any kind of long term value or long tail?
Veronica Guguian: Is it scalable?
Jillian Vorce: Is it scalable? Does it give me energy? Do I really enjoy it? Do I not? There's a bunch more to unpack with that as opposed to client engagements, which are often 5000 a month. Right. So that one might feel like, oh yeah, I can do that. But then I also have to know, all right, so how many hours is that going to take me. How much of my time? Even if I don't do billable hours or any of that, there's still only 24 hours in a day.
Veronica Guguian: Right?
Jillian Vorce: So I need to be able to know how I want to allocate my time. And so what is my profit there? How am I going to manage that? How much of it is my time working versus their project management time? And what are those basic numbers? What's the actual revenue and the kind of profit per hour or however, whatever unit you want to look at? Yeah, so all of those things are important. And then also looking at your work week, which goes back to some of the things you've talked about, your own personal situation with your life, your goals, et cetera. So what does your ideal work week look like? I had a chat with a guy earlier this week. He's building his third company right now. He's been quite successful. We were chatting about this.
Jillian Vorce: He was like, Jillian, I only have meetings between ten and four. He said, but except for you, I got 07:30 a.m. Because of time. He said I was the first one in the air. But anyways, he's like ten and 410 and four. That's when I work, period. So it has to fit in that. So that's my schedule. THe rest of the time, it's my time. So that's how he shows up. So whatever your schedule is, to look at how many hours maximum. And so I'm actually doing this right now as well, like the maximum hours per week and then looking at all the things that I need to account for in my week. Right. So there are some things that are business development. There are some things that are administrative, et cetera.
Jillian Vorce: There's some things that are client work, there's content preparation, there's some data pieces, there's some relationship follow up. So there are several big buckets. And then I need to look at how I allocate my time. Because it can't be. I can't spend 90% of my time creating really fancy social media posts and wonder why you have no business and income. Yeah. So I have to figure out what those numbers are. And so tweaking those, and I've not been as good as I wish I had been over the years at recording how long it actually takes me to do certain things. I do ballparks on things, and I've always done time blocks.
Jillian Vorce: But that's one of the things I'm working on now, is to better hone in on how long it takes me to do specific things so I can be even tighter with my schedule because I need to be hyper efficient these days. So anyhow, I feel like that's all part of how we can be proactive in working on our business.
Veronica Guguian: Thank you for sharing that, because it's so important. How do you allocate time? And I'm doing the same. I'm not working nonstop. I used to at the beginning, and it's not sustainable. And then you realize the only commodity you really have is time, and you can't do anything about it. You have just 24 hours in a day. How do you want to spend them? And then you start prioritizing and you see, how can I? The moment you start working on your business, you can fine tune the processes and you can delegate and you can actually be more efficient. And you know what is funny? The more strict you are with your time, people appreciate it more because it becomes much more valuable because you start valuing yourself and your time. So don't be afraid. That's my advice to all our listeners.
Veronica Guguian: Don't be afraid to be strict and be clear, like, these are my availability. I'm also very strict when people can have meetings with me, not clients, but from outside, because I do want to have time for what you call them, the other buckets. And that's important to me. I do have what I'm doing, actually. I'm in a process, like you. How much time am I allocating for each task and what I do? I don't know if you can see, but I have here, I'm starting my day with the to do list. So I'm writing what has to happen today, important and urgent. And how much time will that take me? And of course, some tasks were going to take five minutes more, some less. If I do it quicker, I'm just going to celebrate and take that time.
Veronica Guguian: For me, I'm not going to do another task, I'm going to have tea or I'm going to have a break, or I'm just doing something for me. And I'm trying not to go overboard when it takes longer. I'm still working on that, but getting better. The trick is I'm getting better.
Jillian Vorce: The more you do it, you get better.
Veronica Guguian: Exactly. Yeah.
Jillian Vorce: And it's like creating a new behavior at first, like a new habit, and then once we get the habit down, then we can start making improvements to it. Right. But it reminds me of. Remember our conversation about, I think we're talking about CRMs, but then also project management and how we do our to do and whatnot. So it just came to mind because you're talking about having a to-do list for me. I tend to do things more digitally these days, aside from my whiteboard. Right. So I've been using an app called Toggle, which is just a chrome extension, but it integrates with my Google Calendar because I've always had blocks, like color coded blocks on my calendar for different things I'm working on, if it's tasks or if it's meetings or what have you.
Jillian Vorce: So now I've connected that with toggle so I can keep track of. So if it's like a content block, I have eight tasks within that to see what type of content it is that I'm working on to be able to better understand how my time is being spent. It's just a simple plugin, so that's what I'm using, and then you can do all kinds of reporting and whatnot. But yeah, I feel like it's the same for me. It's like the content thing we talked about. Whatever is going to be sustainable, whatever you're going to do consistently, that's your ticket. So use that for me. I do better with digital tools.
Veronica Guguian: I think it kind of depends if you have a team, you do need to do it digitally. For me, my way of thinking, and I love writing and I love this, I do need to write it down. So even if this will be translated in my calendar to block the time slots, it all starts with the pen and paper, and it's very personal. This is just clearly my preference. But coming back to our topic actually, and related to what you said is very important because we said, like, you need to do ABCD in order to be consistent and create that habit. But what we forgot to say is you need to actually reserve time, block time in your agenda for it. Time that is non negotiable. So even if something comes and you need to move it, you need to stick to it.
Veronica Guguian: You move it to 1 hour later or one day later or maybe one week later, but don't make it like, oh, it's not important, I'm going to just keep on moving it and just push it. You can make a rule, I can push it one or maybe two times, that's it. The third time needs to happen because if you keep on doing that, it will become like one of those tasks that you don't want to do. You're not going to give the attention and then you end up like a hamster on the wheel going round and not getting anywhere. So you do need to be strict. I think an element of consistency and decisiveness will be very important in this fear. Yeah.
Jillian Vorce: I think procrastination is not very productive.
Veronica Guguian: No.
Jillian Vorce: So getting it done. Yeah.
Veronica Guguian: And actually that brings me to maybe what would be good now to share a couple of tips that we applied or we know about even if we didn't apply. And maybe this will be a nice way to round up the episode. We tend to have very long episodes on how to actually do it. We talked about the why, how it influenced your business. But how exactly can you be kept accountable and not push it indefinitely down in your calendar?
Jillian Vorce: I'm going to jump on that one because I think a couple of things. So first you mentioned the calendar thing. And so one thing that has been helpful for me is I actually have several different calendars available, depending on who the person is and what the situation is. Right.
Veronica Guguian: When you say calendar link.
Jillian Vorce: Like a digital calendar link. Yeah. So I don't know. People can book a meeting for you, everybody? Yeah. And some of them have a 15 minutes max. Like that's what can be booked. Others can book up to 90 minutes. Actually, one of them is 2 hours. So it depends, depending on. I have a couple of different ones. Some of them are available on my website. Some of them are only available if in certain situations I'll share a link with them. So I use those. I help at the same gate.
Veronica Guguian: Yeah.
Jillian Vorce: So that's one thing I see. I know a lot of people use a single calendar link or something for everybody, but for me, I try to be a little bit more structured in the time that's available.
Veronica Guguian: If you go for the free option, you can have just one type of meeting. However, if you're paying for a calendar, then you have the option to have more. And what I noticed, the more time you give. So if you set a meeting of 1 hour, people are going to take 1 hour even if you don't eat. So what I learned, actually, if you make the meeting shorter, even if in your calendar, I always keep 50 minutes extra padding, you are much more productive, actually.
Jillian Vorce: Yeah.
Veronica Guguian: It depends on the meetings, though. Depends on the meetings. But, you know, the type of meeting and how much time do I need or do I want to give them more or not? Sorry for jumping in. Just wanted to know.
Jillian Vorce: It's okay. Yeah, no, it's good. So then the other thing that comes to mind, kind of to continue the thought, I think the direction you're going is in terms of accountability and such. For me, it's the external support. Right. So what other resources or kinds of tools am I utilizing to help keep me engaged, help me focus on building my business, learning new things, getting ideas, et cetera. So I think we've mentioned it in previous episodes, but I think it's relevant here. So masterminds can be really great, I think you've also had experience participating in mastermind groups.
Veronica Guguian: Yeah, I actually created my own mastermind. So Mastermind is a great way, but you can keep it even easier and more accessible. When I launched Pin Ideas in 2017, I had several, but a specific friend that she was thinking about doing her own business, and was keeping accountable. We had a quick 15 minute, half an hour check in each Monday. Where are you? What do you need to do? And basically telling her what are my big tasks for the week. And the second week when we had the call and she was doing the same, which one did you do? What happened? And then once that you place it out there and somebody knows about it, you are more willing to do it, you're not going to procrastinate. You're like, I need to show up.
Veronica Guguian: I need to show up in that meeting, and I need to tell her whether I did or not. And that's a very simple thing that you can implement. And of course, it can be more complex. There are paid masterminds. My mastermind actually approached two ladies that I admired, and I was like, they are so smart and powerful and successful, they will never want to work with me. But guess what? They said yes. And we meet once a month, sharing about, hey, this is where I'm in my business. What's your intake? All of us in different industries, different, totally different, but just getting that different perspective or just talking out loud about a specific topic related to your business was helping you do things. Just put the wheels in motion.
Jillian Vorce: Yeah, absolutely. I think masterminds can be great for that. And I think similarly to what you're describing, I think what's great about masterminds is if you can find, or it can be just an accountability partner or somebody, to find at least somebody or a small group of people, mastermind or whatever, that are in a similar place as you. Right. So it's helpful to be able to talk about similar things. It's like, for anybody that's a parent out there, it's like bitching in solidarity. It's like, we all know we haven't slept. It's like my kid now we're potty training or whatever. It's like knowing and feeling like you're not alone and getting some ideas and how they're handling situations. So it's really good for the solidarity, like the camaraderie piece, but another piece I think is great.
Jillian Vorce: And I know it's been wildly helpful to me. I've been very fortunate over the years to have had this kind of informal board of advisors. People that are, I mean, you could call them mentors. So you can use some words interchangeably here, but some people who are a bit, a few decades ahead of me had a lot of business and life experience and frankly, would say, care about me enough to be honest with me. They want me to succeed, but they're also going to be very honest with me about things, share ideas and whatnot, and it's really helpful. And I also love to have conversations with people who have similar businesses or similar objectives that are a bit ahead of me in business so that I can learn from them. Yeah, I really enjoy looking for opportunities, like specific areas where I can grow.
Jillian Vorce: I love to see and learn from other people what they've done. And I also think it's maybe not as directly related to this conversation, but for me, it feels like it is to do the opposite, which is to find people that are a few clicks behind us and to not forget to reach back and to be accessible to those people as well.
Veronica Guguian: Because if we are to become a mentor, basically.
Jillian Vorce: Yeah. To play that role. So it's like creating these chains.
Veronica Guguian: Right?
Jillian Vorce: Because if we are hoping or expecting people that are ahead of us to be willing to reach back and help us, then perhaps we ought to do the same. So it's a good way. I think also for us to be kind of regulated and not feel like we're so far behind, we're never going to have a seven figure business or we're never going to have whatever the thing is that you're chasing or want or your objective is. But then also, like, hey, I remember when I was just starting out like this person, and now I can help that person start to realize some of their goals and stuff. So I think those are.
Veronica Guguian: It's also giving back to the community in one way.
Jillian Vorce: Yeah, for sure. I think masterminds, communities, retreats, having some sort of mentor or formal board of advisors, all of these things can be really.
Veronica Guguian: Your mentoring applies as well. Yeah. Don't forget to turn towards your team and listen to them because they are working with you, so they will see things that maybe you don't see or they will be able to take you out of your comfort zone or where you are. I would add one more thing, actually, to what you said. When you go and get it. It's basically just getting a different perspective. But when you get that, don't look only for the cheerleaders, because it's great to have cheerleaders and tell you're doing so great, you can do it, and we need that. But I'm always looking for the critic as well, because that enables me to grow and to see what am I lacking? What do I need to do better? What do I need to say goodbye to?
Veronica Guguian: And of course, don't get someone that is very negative and they will just say, everything is bad and shit. Just give up what I mean here. Yeah, but somebody that is willing to. I think you just mentioned it, to be very honest with you, and you're not to take it. To actually take it as this is something I need to hear and I need to learn in order for me to grow, and you shouldn't take it that I need to stop my business and I'm doing really bad and what the heck is happening here? No, by all means, no. It's being real with you and seeing what's happening.
Jillian Vorce: Yeah. I think of it as the kiss and kick. And then they'll give me a whack. Yeah, both.
Veronica Guguian: But you know what? We Have a saying in Romanian. Every kick in the ass is a step forward.
Jillian Vorce: There you go.
Veronica Guguian: See, the English option will be like when a door opens a window. When a door closes, a window.
Jillian Vorce: Window opens.
Veronica Guguian: Yeah.
Jillian Vorce: I like the Romanian version better. It's more concrete, more active, I think.
Veronica Guguian: One more thing I would like to add to this tool is that you can, or methods or tactics, however you want to call them, to help you work on your business will be to get a coach. Because especially if you feel lost or if you feel you are out of love, you fell out of love with your business. I think a coach will be a great way to guide you to what you want. So, especially when we talk about your passion and if you feel lost as an entrepreneur, a founder, then I will definitely advise a coach. And don't forget consultants as well, when you're a little bit lost, because sometimes, actually, what you need is structure. So get someone that is specialized in that and put, like, Jimmy in here.
Jillian Vorce: You're speaking my language, talking structure and process spreadsheets.
Veronica Guguian: Sometimes it can be something as simple as that just to get the structure right and to get things restarted and kick off so it doesn't need to be very complicated. That's what I'm trying to say here. Sometimes a small tweak will make such a big difference.
Jillian Vorce: Yeah. Especially if the tweak is. I'm not working on my business. Presently, I'm going to begin working on my business. That's a really important tweak. Right.
Veronica Guguian: That's just exactly. Yeah.
Jillian Vorce: So that's a good starting point. But yeah, I feel like we packed in a bunch on this episode, so hopefully it was helpful and gives people a different idea or something that's actionable, that's relevant for their business. I know. I always appreciate our chats. It helps me, it keeps me accountable, having our same. Our regular conversations. But anyhow, I think we'll put a bow on 18.
Veronica Guguian: We'll put a bow on 18. And I think when we are sharing this episode, we should create a poll and see how many people are actually working on the business instead of in the business. Very curious to see that.
Jillian Vorce: So I'm curious about that. But me, with my anal retentive data kind of way of thinking, I'm curious if there's a percentage. How much of your time do you spend working on your business versus in what percentage? How much time do you allocate? I'm actually curious about that one.
Veronica Guguian: I think that's a better one, actually, so.
Jillian Vorce: Okay.
Veronica Guguian: Thank you all for listening and see you next week.
Jillian Vorce: All right, ciao.
Veronica Guguian: Bye.