How Do You Know When It’s Safe To Exhale In Your Business?

You run an expertise business.

You have clients—maybe buyers if you offer products—and you have revenue coming in.

When can you actually exhale for a few minutes?

A client asked me this recently (ironically, they knew exactly what I’d say, but threw it out there for us to chew on).

In their case, my answer was “right now”.

This is someone who met their annual goal in the first quarter (no small feat). Did they still have frustrations? Of course. Were they still waiting on a final thumbs up from legal on a contract? Yep.

But here’s the thing. They have a system: A system for developing leads, a system for building their email list, a system for keeping relationships in motion.

They have a clearly defined set of services with thoughtful (and now proven) pricing aligned with their brand of authority.

So yes, they can exhale.

They can fully commit to their business and just keep working their system, knowing they’re on the right track.

They can ENJOY the process and tweak as they need to.

The challenge is when you haven’t quite figured out the system that reliably works for you.

Then exhaling becomes harder because you’re always trying to figure out what lever(s) to press:

  • How do you get more leads? Better leads? How should you spend your relationship development time—and with whom?
  • How do you build your email list—and how long does it take to convert readers to buyers?
  • Should you reach out to media and if so, which outlets?

You can’t build a sustainable expertise business until you’ve built the right systems.

Systems that tell you how and where to spend your time to best effect—and that produce reliable outcomes—so you can run your business without it running you.

Related: Why It’s Always Worth Building Your Own Digital Platform