You are listening to My Freedom Grove podcast with Gretchen Hernandez, episode 165.

Welcome to My Freedom Grove Podcast, your calm space for practical help to get your dream business up and running while being authentically you and taking care of your mental health. I'm your host, Gretchen Hernandez. I'm so glad you're here!

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Hi My Strong Friends.  I missed talking with you.  My last podcast episode was at the end of May.  I took an unplanned break from podcasting.  I love to be open and transparent with you.  I was getting disengaged and resistant to the editing and producing steps.  I love creating the content and recording.  The rest is enjoyable, but very time consuming.  I typically take 8 hours a week for each podcast.  That’s 8 hours that I am unable to see clients or provide additional workshops.

I really wanted to create some new workshops for you.  So, I made a quick decision to pause the podcast and reallocate my time to creating and providing those workshops.  Many of you came to the Masterclasses.  I advertised them on social media.  For those of you that didn’t know about these Masterclasses, I want to offer you the replays.  The replays will be available through the end of July. 


The list of Masterclasses include:

Identity Shift - A Reevaluation of What’s Good and Bad in Business

Kick Fear of Failure to the Curb - the 7 Steps to Achieve Success for You and Your Clients

Stop Wasting Time and Money - Business Experiment Design Session

Mentally Healthy Business - How to Resolve Emotional Triggers

Dream Schedule - How to Make Your Dream a Reality

You can access all of the replays by going to my website at https://www.myfreedomgrove.com/masterclassschedule

I had two other exciting things during my podcast break.  I went to Las Vegas.  It was 20% business trip and 80% vacation.  I tried to get my husband to come with me, but he chose to stay home.  It was the first time I went on vacation by myself.  Wow!  I didn’t realize how much I needed it.  Also, the freedom to go at my own pace, doing what I wanted to do was so relaxing!

Last week, I took my family to Disneyland.  We hadn’t gone since 2013.  Back then we didn’t know my daughter was autistic.  It was not a good experience last time.  This time, we were prepared with our Safety Plan.  And Disneyland had some great accommodations.  It felt so good to go have fun.

It also marked an important phase in my business. Financially sustainable and able to fully fund leisure vacations and trips.  My word of the year for 2023 is “Arrived”.  This summer I felt it.

I’m happy to share an update.  I hired a Podcast Manager.  This episode is the last one I will fully edit and produce.  Starting next week, I will only do the content and recording.  I get to hand off everything else to my Podcast Manager.  Whew!

My Podcast release date will return to Tuesdays.  For years it was on Tuesday.  I temporarily had it on Fridays to give myself enough time to do all the extra tasks.  I’m so happy to bring it back to Tuesday!

Ok, Let’s get started on this week’s Topic.

HOW TO STOP DOING TOO MUCH IN YOUR BUSINESS

It’s so easy to slip into overwhelm and overworking in your business.  I know there is just so much to do.  But, your mental health is more important than anything.

When you have a calm, smoothly flowing business, with a balanced workload, you won’t get burnt out.

I am a certified LEAN Six Sigma Business Coach.  For more than a decade I helped to streamline all the business operations in Biotech.  I educated and coached the staff of 1000 people on LEAN principles and led them through many projects.  In the end, the business ran easier, cost substantially less to run  and employees were more engaged because their  workload was balanced.

Now it’s your turn to get this kind of love.

I want to introduce you to LEAN business principles.  

I’m introducing 1 LEAN topic today and showing you how you can start to use it on one part of your business.  Next week, I’ll expand this topic to the rest of your business.

The LEAN topic is the 8 Wastes.

All business processes contain Waste.  Some have a lot more waste than others.  When you have waste in your business processes it costs you extra time, money and effort and reduces your profit margin.

Even if you are at the beginning of your Business journey, you’ll want to listen.  As you create your business processes, you’ll be able to prevent waste before it starts.  Or, if you have relatively new processes, you can reduce the waste soon rather than later.

8 Wastes of business

T - transportation

I - Inventory

M - Movement

W - Waiting

O - Over processing

O - Over production

D - Defects

S - Smarts (Underutilized Talents)

Transportation refers to moving something, usually in a vehicle of some type.  This can include transporting you, transporting your products & materials, and even transporting your clients.

Inventory refers to the tangible stuff you buy/sell or use for which you have to provide storage and inventory management.

Movement refers to the moving of you, resources or supplies within your workspace.  If everything is done virtually, it will include the number of clicks to complete everything.

Waiting refers to anytime a “widget” has to wait for the next process step.  A “widget” may be a client (ex. Waiting list or Queue) or any component within a process (ex. Content created, but not edited yet.)

Over Processing refers to working on something longer than necessary.  Necessary is a subjective term. Perfectionist tendencies may cause Over Processing.  The “right” amount of processing is determined by the customer and what they are willing to pay for.

Over Production refers to creating more that what’s needed

Defects refers to any kind of error, mistake or physical imperfection that requires rework to correct

Smarts also known as Underutilized Talents.  This is typically referring to people’s knowledge and skill sets.  If the resource is not used for these talents, time, money and effort may be wasted paying for additional help.  AI, Automation tools and features within your existing systems may also be underutilized.

It’s first important to recognize when something is a waste in your business process.  You are always at liberty to allow the waste to remain.  It’s your business afterall.  However, if you want to work less hours, have better work/life balance, or be more profitable, you’ll want to chose to reduce the waste.

HOW TO SEE THE WASTE

Before you can see the waste in your business, you need to know your End to End Process.  An End to End Process is the start of a major process in your business, all the steps in between, and the completion of that whole process.

For the coaches, healers and educators I typically work with, there are 3 main End to End Processes we focus on for streamlining.  They are:

Creation

Sales Funnel

Product Fulfillment

Today’s episode is going to focus on Creation.  Next week we’ll get into Sales Funnels and Product Fulfillment.

Creation - Includes Products/Services, Content & Material for marketing

In the early years of your business, when you are experimenting, you may be creating a lot of great things.  It’s fun.  Your creative juices are flowing.  You are so excited to get everything out into the world.

That’s exactly how I felt about my podcast in 2019 when I first started it.  I wrote out a list of all the topics.  My list was close to 100 topics.  I was bursting at the seams with excitement to share everything that I knew.

But then, as your active client load grows, you have less and less time available for the creation.

OVERDELIVERING VS. OVERPRODUCTION

Looking back at the TIMWOODS list of Business Waste, you may ask yourself, Am I Over Producing?

How would you know?  What does Over Producing look like?

I’m going to give you a physical example to make it easier to see.  Do you have a Grocery Outlet store where you live?  The Grocery Outlet specializes in selling over produced items at a bargain price.  Let’s say a Cracker Company made 50,000 boxes of crackers. They planned to sell it to a large grocery store like Safeway for the bulk price of $3/box.  Safeway marks it up to $5 box so they can make money too.  Safeway puts in a smaller order than expected.  They only order 10,000 boxes.  Safeway’s Inventory Control system helps them understand the demand for the crackers and the optimum inventory levels. 

The cracker company has an excess inventory of 40,000 boxes.  They over produced.  Now they have a choice…store the excess inventory until Safeway can buy the rest or find another buyer.  Inventory is another one of the 8 business wastes.  It requires storage room, utilities, management & rotation, and there’s shelf life to consider.  This was not a viable option for the Cracker Company.

The Grocery Outlet comes in and offers to pay $0.50 per box.  They believe they can sell the 40,000 boxes for $1 each.  They move the inventory and still make a profit.

The Cracker Company, on the other hand, has moved out the inventory, but selling at $0.50 box vs. $3 box is significantly less profit margin, if any.

The lesson learned is to understand the demand before producing.  How many units of the product is the sweet spot?

Now, you may not have physical things that you’re creating.  In most cases, you’re creating content.  How many pieces of content are needed to get your desired end result?

Is it possible you are creating more than what is necessary to get the end result?

I have 2 Tips -

1. Map out your Customer Journey so you know exactly what they need
2. Use data to evaluate & adjust

There are two Customer Journey maps to consider.  The first is their transformational journey.  Know their Before and After, the milestones in between and how you help them achieve their milestones.  Your time is valuable, so is theirs.  As much as you may want to over deliver, remember to over deliver in a way that saves them time.  For example, I include Project Plans for product/service creation.  This saves my client’s time because they don’t have to brainstorm all the steps.

The other Customer Journey is their pathway to purchasing your products/services.  When this is flushed out, every piece of marketing and product suite components have a function. 

Use data to know how much each piece is being used and conversion to the next step in the journey.

The data will help you decide which pieces stay, go or get revised.

If the content you're evaluating is marketing content (social posts, blogs, podcasts, videos, etc.) look at the frequency vs. the desired result.  Data is your friend.  I’ll share something interesting…as you know I do a weekly podcast.  I started in December of 2019 and now it is July 2023.  There have only been two times I took a break.  Recently I took a break of almost 2 months.  I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see what the data showed.  Much to my surprise, the traffic to my website and podcast episodes increased.  With my last episode in May, I averaged 10,000 page views a month.  Within a month my page views increased to an average of 14.000 per month.  So, I did less processing and got higher results.  And, I had my highest sales month on record $25k sold, $17k cash received.  

What is the sweet spot for your content?  The smallest amount of processing that will get you your target results?

DO THE MINIMUM TO INCREASE VALUE

There are two terms that are helpful to know.

One is Minimum Viable Product.  This refers to the smallest amount of process steps within a product/service that will be incredibly valuable to your clients and generate enough revenue for a sustainable business.

The other is Minimum Viable Process.  This refers to the smallest amount and size of process steps to run your business.

Have you ever worked for a company that needed to temporarily operate with a skeleton crew?  Several businesses experienced that during the pandemic.  They needed to keep the business running just enough to keep the business viable.  They had to determine the bare minimum to do with the bare minimum staff coming in person.

Do you know what your Bare Minimum is?  Have you ever tried running your business with the bare minimum?  If so, what were your results?

It makes for an interesting experiment.  If you run on the bare minimum for a month and still make a sustainable revenue, would you want to add the rest back in?

Ok, I’m going to wrap this up for this week.  Next week I’m going to have you look at how all of the pieces fit together in your business so you can start streamlining,

I care about you my friends.  You are doing such important work in this world.  We need to take care of you and your mental health so you can keep helping people.  Reducing the waste out of your business is just one step. 

I hope this weekend you’ll be able to take some time for yourself to have fun.  Going on the Avenger’s ride at Disneyland injected so much joy into me.  I felt like a kid again.  I hope there is something you can do that will bring you just as much fun and joy. 

Have a great weekend.  I’ll talk with you again on Tuesday, my new podcast publishing day.  Take care.  Bye - Bye

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Thank you for listening to My Freedom Grove Podcast. When you are ready to make your dream business a reality and take care of your mental health, I invite you to join the Unshakable Business Co-Lab. This is the mastermind membership you've been waiting for. There's no limits on your imagination, nor your timeline. We're with you every step of the way. To learn more, please visit www.myfreedomgrove.com/join. I'll see you there!