Engineering Calmer Agencies & Consulting Firms: Calm is the New KPI

What if you could design a business that inherently operates on calm, not chaos? What are the essential elements to make this possible, and how can they be systematically incorporated into your business model? As we dive into our new series on creating calmer businesses, we explore the foundational elements that make businesses serene and sustainable. Each episode of this series will deconstruct a...

Can grants really fund your service business?  This episode wraps up our deep dive into unique funding options for service businesses, exploring an often overlooked resource—grants. Meet Danielle Desir Corbett. She's a former grants administrator turned 4x grant-funded creative entrepreneur. She curates a monthly newsletter called "Grants For Creators," which shares funding opportunities for U.S....

In this special 100th episode of Beyond Margins, host Susan Boles delivers her first solo discussion on utilizing debt thoughtfully to fund service businesses. Drawing from her experience as a fractional CFO, she explores the benefits and strategic uses of debt, shares real-world examples, and provides practical tips for business owners facing cash flow challenges or looking to seize growth opport...

Do you need funding for your business but loathe the idea of giving up a piece of your company to someone else? I get it. You built this baby with your own two hands, most likely giving up nights, weekends, early mornings, and time with your friends and family to do it. So the idea of handing over part of that to someone who wasn’t sweating it out with you might make you feel pretty uncomfortable....

Cash is only easy to come by when you don't really need it. When things are going well, banks are happy to finance loans and lines of credit, and investors are easy to find when you're profitable and growing quickly. But we all know things aren’t always going well. For service-based businesses, where our products aren’t widgets but more often the intangible value of our brains and experiences, we...

Consider this scenario: a key employee unexpectedly needs to take an extended leave. Is your business financially and structurally prepared to handle that without a hitch? This is a challenge many small businesses face, and it's crucial to be prepared. As we wrap up our series on sabbaticals, leaves, and breaks, we will examine the policies and financial planning that underpin them. To guide us th...

What happens when you unexpectedly need to step away from your business's operations? How can you prepare your business not just to survive but to thrive, even when key team members are away? In our continuing series on planning for leaves, sabbaticals, and breaks from your business, we’re shifting our focus from the personal side to the backbone of any business: operations. Layla Pomper, creator...

How do you step away from your business for a necessary break without losing momentum or compromising your values? Deciding to take a leave or sabbatical, and then figuring out the best approach for you, how to maintain client relationships while you're away, or even ensuring you have enough financial security during your break are all complex challenges that many of us face. As part of my explora...

Sometimes, you just need a break. I know I did.   What was meant to be a quick breather turned into a transformative journey of two and a half years . The show (and my company) emerged with a new name, a new look, and a new perspective on what truly sustains a business— and a life . I say that I took a break from my business. But the reality is that I broke . I realized that I was burnt out to the...

Break the Ceiling is now Beyond Margins. I’m excited to bring back the show and introduce you to people thinking about operations, finance, and business-building with calm as their top KPI.  Do you know someone who could use a little more calm in their business? Someone who wants to think beyond margins? Share the show with them! And make sure you follow or subscribe in your favorite podcast app....

I wanted to give you an update on what's going on with Break the Ceiling. Over the last two years, I've released almost a hundred episodes of Break the Ceiling. I've put out so many episodes that I'm really proud of, and I've talked to a ton of really amazing business owners. Thank you so much for listening and hanging out here with me, geeking out on the backend of running a business. I wanted to...

Boundaries are all about setting guidelines for how you work. From your very first interaction with a client or a prospect, you're giving them hints about how you work or even explicitly setting expectations for how you'll work together. So if you take four days to respond to their request for information, they might have the impression that you're a little slow. React immediately, and they'll thi...

You are not your business. Your business is something you are creating, which means you have a relationship with it. Like any relationship that we are in, the relationship that we have with our business can be complex and takes understanding, consideration, and work. And as with our personal relationships, the ones that we have with our businesses are shaped by our past experiences, for better or...

When was the last time you crossed off everything on your to-do list? Have you ever? Does even glancing at it make you feel overwhelmed and maybe a little bad about yourself? Hustle culture tells us that working 24/7, 365 will bring us success, that we have to grind it out to gain ground. But not only is that not realistic for real people with families and friends and lives we want to live, it’s n...

Maintenance mode as a topic for the podcast actually came out of a personal capacity crisis. Like a lot of people, since March of 2020, I've been without child care. With my son in hybrid school all year long, I gradually started having less and less time to devote to ScaleSpark. I lowered the bar on my expectations for myself and what I could accomplish again and again and again, but there was st...

Sometimes the challenges to consistency come from self-sabotage, things like distraction, boredom, imposter syndrome. But especially for folks who are neurodivergent or dealing with chronic issues or disabilities, consistency comes with additional challenges that require you to figure out how to manage unpredictable energy levels, or how to cope with executive function issues. Most common producti...

It's ok to quit. Consistency can be critical to success, but knowing when to quit is an equally valuable skill. So, how do you know when to quit and when to just push through the hard parts? You've heard me talking to business owners who credit being consistent as the key to their success. But failure is also a part of being an entrepreneur and one we talk about a lot less because it's not as pret...

Consistency is the underlying premise behind maintenance mode, behind working the system, behind the mantra of "don't break it". It's the opposite of shiny object syndrome. When you're consistent with your offers and your messaging, people know who you are, what you stand for, and what you sell. When you're consistent in your operations, your team and your clients know exactly what to do next. Whe...

The point of maintenance mode is to give you time and space to take a REAL break. Not a vacation where you're checking your email or you're stuck on your laptop kind of break. But a real, genuine break. That step back can feel kinda scary. It might feel like you're standing at a precipice, trying to figure out if you'll trip and fall over the edge, or if it's just a tiny step down to a solid surfa...

In order to be completely away from your business for any length of time, you probably need to hire someone. Or maybe a few someones. In the last episode , I talked to Jason Staats about how he uses technology to help him keep his 4 different ongoing projects in maintenance mode, but hiring is also part of his maintenance strategy. He comes up with the ideas, figures out the tools, then hires some...

You can't step away and do something else if everything's going to come to a screeching halt when you do. To be prepared for maintenance mode, you have to figure out how to get the behind-the-scenes systems to operate, consistently, without you. In order to get your business into maintenance mode–and build a stronger business while you're at it–you have to answer the question, "What if I'm not her...

Sales are the lifeblood of any business. So when you're thinking about maintenance mode in your business, you need to think about how to make sure sales still come in, even if you're not around. Last week we talked about the first step in preparing for maintenance mode by being consistent with your messaging and your offers. If you haven't listened to Episode 81 with Michelle Mazur, go check that...

No one is bored with your business but you. The last month or two, we've been talking about maintenance mode–the idea that you can create a business that can kind of run itself. There are systems and processes set up, so everyone knows exactly what they need to do. The same kinds of systems and tools that you would use to prepare your business for maintenance are the SAME ones that you would use t...

Sometimes we end up building a business that just doesn't fit our lives. Not intentionally. Sometimes it just happens that way. Maybe you don’t have the freedom you thought you’d have. Maybe you’re doing group courses but you really want to be 1 on 1 with clients, or vice versa. Sometimes when you step back and examine what it'll take to get to maintenance mode or what it will take to scale or gro...

Don't break it, stay the course, work the system. Don't break it, stay the course, work the system. That's the refrain that's in the back of my head all the time now. One of the biggest challenges of getting your business into maintenance mode is your mindset. It's not that it's so difficult to build systems or design your business model to be sustainable and resilient. It's that we, as entreprene...