Find More Freedom In Growing Your Business With FLOW

When you first started your business, you may recall the excitement and the energy that flowed into your work. It felt like everything was coming together and moving forward — and it was thrilling!

As your business has grown, however, you might find yourself in the messy middle. You have more clients or customers, more specific offers, or more popular products, and there is much more to do in a day just to keep things running.

Honestly, you might find yourself at a point in your business where everything feels a bit chaotic. Like you don’t know what you’ll find when you sit down at your desk and you have no idea what fires you’ll need to put out today.

You crave the “grind phase,” where you could put your head down, do the work, and see results. Are those days lost forever? Definitely not!

What you need is a way to streamline your work and focus on what’s most important so that you can continue to grow your business. If you’re missing the momentum of those early days but know that you’re on a much more stable track in your business, it’s time to find FLOW — my framework for business success and growth.

Let’s create calm from the chaos by seeing how my FLOW framework can help you work less and live more. What do you say?

WHAT IS FLOW, EXACTLY?

FLOW is one of my own creations; a framework that helps overwhelmed female entrepreneurs feel more confident and capable in their daily work, thanks to four elements of FLOW:

• Free up your time (structure)
• Leverage systems (systems)
• Own your CEO role (strategy)
• Work on your terms (support)

As a business owner, I know you want to find flow, that state of being where you are focused, centered, and productive — but you find yourself in constant hustle instead. That’s why I created the FLOW Framework, to help you figure out which areas of your business you need support so you can stop feeling scattered.

Let’s break down what FLOW stands for and what each point means for your business.

FREE UP YOUR TIME

How many times have you wished you had more time, but instead you’re answering emails you didn’t expect to answer or starting a project you forgot about until the last minute? As small business owners and entrepreneurs, we have all been there. But it’s not a place we want to stay.

To get out of the ever-expanding constraints on your time, you want to think about ways to free up your time. And in my experience as a Business Growth & Systems Strategist, the best way to do that is to create structure.

Structure is the foundation of your business. When most of us started out our businesses, we set up shop however was most convenient for us. We organized our files in the way that was most intuitive. We managed payments in the way that was most familiar. For every decision we made, we only had to consider the impact on ourselves.

But in order to grow, and in order to stop spending precious time on things that don’t actually need our time or attention, we need to make sure we have structures that can be built upon and picked up by others.

Structure might include:

• Filing processes for documents or assets
• Standard operating procedures, or SOPs, for your most important tasks
• Contracts that clearly state the scope and nature of your work
• Invoice standards, including how you get paid and when
• Creating boundaries around your calendar and schedule

With simple structures like these in place, you’ll find that you can actually free up your time and limit the amount of friction (and, to be honest, chaos!) in your daily work. Instead of wondering where that file went or when that invoice will get paid, you already know.

LEVERAGE SYSTEMS

Systems are the backbone of your business, the tools that will allow you to dedicate more of your resources toward growth. When you leverage systems, you will be able to:

• Spend less time figuring out who needs to do what, when because it will be obvious to everyone who’s accountable.
• Spend fewer resources on completing tasks because you will know what is the optimal way to get something done.
• Spend less money paying for tools that you don’t use because every tool has a purpose and is being used effectively.
• Spend less energy on small decisions / manual tasks that can be automated.

Systems might include:

• Onboarding tools, like a call scheduler or a CRM (like Dubsado or HoneyBook)
• Project management tools and calendars to organize projects and tasks (like ClickUp and Asana)
• Inbox management, including tags, folders, canned emails, etc.
• Invoicing tools and bookkeeping systems (like QuickBooks or Wave)

Each of these systems can be used to free up more time so that you can focus on what’s important. Imagine not having to manually find times to schedule a call with a client, or being able to automatically send invoices at the end of the month. All of that is possible with the right systems.

OWN YOUR CEO ROLE

As a CEO — or Chief Executive Officer — it’s your job to steer your business in the direction it needs to go in. You have a big-picture vision for your business, but you also need to find a way to get there. That’s where strategy comes in.

Your business strategy is how your business is going to grow. Owning your CEO role means having a plan for growth, and being able to pinpoint what does and doesn’t work for your business. With a strategy, you’ll know what steps need to be taken to reach a certain result — i.e. we need to sell 100 products this year to reach our revenue goal.

Of course, the CEO role takes into account everything in your business, from marketing to lead generation to customer service and more. When you own this role and make decisions from a strategic, high-level point of view, you’ll find that you can stop getting sucked into small tasks or projects that don’t allow you to be the CEO.

Strategic thinking as the CEO might include:

• Creating specific goals for the business
• Mapping out marketing and content strategies to help you reach new audiences
• Establishing new connections and developing new relationships
• Delegating work in line with the strategic goals of the business

Without strategic thinking as a CEO, you’re constantly going to be at the mercy of your inbox, your calendar, and your energy levels. When you start thinking and acting like the CEO of your business, though, you open yourself up to new growth.

WORK ON YOUR TERMS

I’m betting that you got started with your business because you wanted to work your way. To find freedom in your daily life. To create something that was yours — and that you could provide in your own unique way. But you couldn’t do that all by yourself.

To work on your terms, you need support. You need help from other people or other skilled team members to actually work the way you want to work, focusing on your zone of genius. In order to do work on our own terms, we might not need the kind of support we think we do; it may not be a business coach but rather longer hours of childcare, a meal delivery service, or a housekeeper. Business support might look like hiring a copywriter, tech VA, Kajabi expert, and so on.

Once you find the supports that help you do your best (and most focused) work, you’ll find that you have:

• More time to spend with your family (or alone!)
• Clients or customers who respect your boundaries and time
• More energy to focus on big ideas, instead of small tasks
• Space to collaborate with team members or partners who bring new ideas to life
• Time to take a vacation (maybe even without your laptop — gasp!)
• The ability to log off without guilt

All of that and more is possible when you embrace the FLOW Framework. After working with dozens of clients who’ve adopted this framework, I know it can work for you.

WANT HELP ESTABLISHING FLOW IN YOUR BUSINESS?

The key to really finding more freedom in your business isn’t necessarily to break 7 figures or to have a business model that feels forced on you. Instead, it’s all about finding ways to make it easier for you to do your most important work, so you feel productive and continue to move forward.

I want to help you narrow down on which areas of your business need help — whether it’s strategy, structure, systems, or support. In my free Focus Framework guide, I break down exactly what strategy, structure, systems, and support you need for your specific business phase.

Learn what you should be doing every day to grow your business to the next level and how you can finally find more time, energy, and interest in your work again.

Get my Focus Framework

originally published at www.kristenwestcott.com/blog