This is the transcript from EntreArchitect Podcast Episode 228, How to Simplify Your Business.
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***Start Transcript***
Mark R. LePage:
Do you know if your firm is profitable? Do you know how much profit you’re making? Do you know how much profit you should be making? Okay. One last question. Do you know how much you should be charging to make that profit? Well, you can learn how by downloading our free course profit for small firm architects today at EntreArchitect.com/freecourse. My name is Mark R. LePage and you are listening to EntreArchitect podcast where I speak with inspiring, passionate people who share their knowledge and expertise all to help you build a better business. As a small firm, entrepreneurial architect. This is Episode 228 and this week I’m speaking with business coach Ashley Gartland about how to simplify your business.
This Episode of EntreArchitect podcast is supported by our platform sponsors, ARCAT, the online resource, delivering quality building material information, cad details, bim specifications, and much more ARCAT.com. Freshbooks, the cloud based accounting software that makes running your small firm easy, fast and secure, spend less time on accounting and more time doing the work that you love and Gusto. Gusto is making payroll benefits and hr easy for small businesses. Modern technology does the heavy lifting, so it’s easy to get things right.
Ashley Gartland, welcome to EntreArchitect podcast. It’s great having you here. Let me introduce you to our audience here. Ashley Gartland is a business coach who works with women entrepreneurs to simplify their business, which that sounds good already, and they build a stronger foundation so they can experience more growth and fulfillment in their work and more freedom in their life. Ashley has been an entrepreneur since the age of 22 when she got started as a freelance food writer. Alright. And after working in editing and event planning, public relations, digital publishing, Ashley launched her coaching practice to help overwhelmed entrepreneurs grow their business by doing less better. I can’t wait to have this conversation because that’s what it’s all about, right? Ashley’s work has been featured in the Oprah magazine, Huffington Post Being Boss, and she’s appeared on the Startup Sessions, Courage and Clarity and The Feel Good Effects podcasts. And today we’re going to get into how to simplify your business. Maybe talk a little bit about business coaching but before we get into any of that stuff, I want to know more about you, Ashley, so sort of go back to where you started all this stuff and send us to bring us to where we are today.
Ashley Gartland:
Well, I’ll try and keep it a little short and sweet because it’s, you know, it spans a decade or so, a little bit more than that. So I graduated from college and I did not like the options that I saw out there for me, I really wanted to build a business that provided me with the film it and freedom and flexibility to live where I wanted to live and kind of set my own schedule. And so I decided to try my hand at entrepreneurship and I launched a writing business and I did freelance writing. And like you said in the bio there, a lot of other things. I wear a lot of different hats. I did some editing, I did some public relations, I did some event planning. I wrote some books, I kind of followed the breadcrumbs and they took me to different places in that field and then about 10 years in or so I started to feel the pull to do something different.
I felt like I’d reached a lot of my goals in that industry and I wasn’t feeling as fulfilled with the work anymore and some people started showing up that were asking me to mentor them and ask, you know, how could they create what I created and how could they get that business for themselves. And so I started mentoring them and around that same time find out there is this thing called business coaching and it really peaked my interest. And so at that point I decided I was going to pivot and go back to school for coaching and learn how to do that and then blend my experience as an entrepreneur and my new skillset as a coach and started working with entrepreneurs.
Mark R. LePage:
Yeah. And so that’s what you’re doing now, you’re a full time business coach, right. You focus mostly on women? You work mostly with women?
Ashley Gartland:
A couple of men, a lot of women though.
Mark R. LePage:
Yeah. Yeah. And, and so and your focuses, it’s sort of simplifying your business and your life and sort of making them all sort of jive and work together, right?
Ashley Gartland:
Yeah, absolutely. And it took me a little while to see that that was my specialty. You know, I didn’t actually see that that side ran my first business. I knew I’d always seen that my peers were experiencing a lot of burnout and a lot of stress and a lot of overwhelm and they were working around the clock and I wasn’t experiencing that as much and I didn’t really know why or didn’t really take much notice to that. But when I started my second business, I really had to set up my business to run in a streamlined, simplified way because of some constraints I had in my life as a mom and, you know, a partner. And so I really simplified and streamlined further then and started to develop the tools and the language around it and figured out what results you can get to doing that. And then I realized that that was my thing.
Mark R. LePage:
Yeah. And well you just said about sort of integrating your business with your family and raising kids that’s resonating with our audience because the EntreArchitect audience, they’re all small firms, small farm owners and many, many parents, moms and dads trying to integrate their lives trying to run small practices and being mom and dad at the same time and it is overwhelming. And it’s frustrating because you try to do both and you try to be the best you can at both. And because you sort of don’t get that mix right, sometimes you’re not doing any of it the way you should and so I think that resonates very much with our listeners. Before we get into sort of the nuts and bolts of simplifying your business and sort of getting that life that we’re all looking for, let’s talk a little bit about what you do as a business coach. What specifically do you do as a business coach and how does that help someone?
Ashley Gartland:
Yeah, so there are dozens of types of business coaches. There are people who focus on and digital marketing. There are people focused on strategy. There are business coaches who focus solely on mindset. Now I focus on simplifying. I like to think of myself as a business coach who’s mentor and a teacher and a guide and a problem solver who can help my clients see the things that they can’t see because they’re too close to their business, they’re way too much in the weeds to see the solutions and also someone who can help them accelerate their efforts to reach their goals so that they can experience the success and they can experience that lifestyle business if they want to create.
Mark R. LePage:
I think when people hear the word simplified business, it sounds so good, but what does that really mean? I mean, business is complicated, so how do you simplify your business? So sort of what is your focus and your goal?
Ashley Gartland:
So my goal is to help people simplify so that they can grow more because I’ve found that when people do less better, and what I mean by that is they focus more on the most important things in their business. They’re actually able to get better results. And it sounds counterintuitive, right? Because you think that if you’re doing all the things to market your business, work with your clients, go above and beyond, that’s how your business is gonna grow, but it’s actually when we streamline and we actually do less and focus really intentionally on those things that we’re able to double down on the things that are working and see a lot more growth. So that’s one of the reasons we simplify. The other two reasons are kind of these asides where you’ll get more fulfillment because you spend more time doing the work that you love doing and you also get more freedom back, which is, you know, for a lot, like you said, your audience that really resonates, you get more freedom back to enjoy your life.
Mark R. LePage:
Yeah, that sounds good. So how do we do that? What are some of the steps that we’ll go through to simplify our business?
Ashley Gartland:
Yeah, so the work I do with my clients is still bespoke, it’s so related to their business. As I worked with lots of people, I’ve started to see some patterns and so I’ve developed five steps to simplifying that have really become kind of the core of my work and they have their things that repeat with each client. So one is this focus on doing less better. Like that is a core principle and it’s especially true when it comes to your marketing efforts. I see people trying to be on all the social media platforms or doing all the networking events and you know, they’re part of these dozens of different communities and they cannot possibly be effective in that way because they’re spread too thin. It’s when people streamline and say, okay, I’m going to focus on three maybe just two social platforms or I’m going to go really deep with a couple of networks or I’m going to focus really strongly on referrals are really strongly on just networking events that they start to see their efforts working. And so marketing is like a great example of how you can do less better.
Mark R. LePage:
Yeah. That is a great example. I’ve experienced that with both Five Cat, with my architecture firm, Five Cat Studio as well as EntreArchitect specifically with EntreArchitect because I wanted to be everywhere, you know, so I wanted to do Twitter and I wanted to do Instagram and I want to do YouTube and I want to do Facebook. And I was so spread thin that none of them were very effective. And then I launched a Facebook group and that exploded. I’m like, okay, well I got to focus on that because that really works really well. What I’d like to do next is focus on Instagram. So Instagram and because a lot of my community is also on Instagram but the Facebook group really worked well. And so by focusing on those two you know, I’ve seen that I’ve gotten a lot more result.
Ashley Gartland:
Yeah, you get more traction, but you’re also adding more value and building your community. And so it’s a really beautiful thing.
Mark R. LePage:
Yeah. Yeah. And I’d love to do all those things and as we grow and we add on team members, we’d be able, will be able to launch the YouTube channel and do the things that we really want to do. What are the other steps?
Ashley Gartland:
Start relying on systems. I’ve heard you talk about systems I think are key in your business and I think people really get scared off of creating systems because they think it’s going to be too time intensive to create them or they think maybe it’s going to involve too much technology or they’re going to have to purchase all these tools and so to that I would say that a lot of the systems that you’re going to be creating repeatable processes that you do in your business, and it might be as simple as opening up a Word document or a Google doc and creating a checklist for yourself so that you know every time you onboard a client, these are the steps that you take and then you don’t have to worry about remembering them or forgetting anything in the process; just to open a word document and follow the steps and it’s really easy.
Mark R. LePage:
Yeah, and with architects and creative people in general, when they hear systems, they get a little nervous because they feel like they’re going to be restricted by a system that they want to be able to have that freedom to do whatever they want, whenever they want, and the systems sort of found like it’s going to restrict them and not be as creative as they want to be. What is your response to that?
Ashley Gartland:
They actually create freedom. Right? And so if you’re looking at time is a huge way to create freedom in your business. If these systems that you employ can give you back half the time you’re spending right now, what if you could use for creative projects or what if you could use those to just enjoy your life? So I really encourage people to, when they’re feeling a little bit hesitant to create systems, I encourage them to just try one. And I have a kind of a systems sheet that I give people when we talked through the four main systems which are client and customer systems, sales systems, administrative systems and marketing systems. And then I tell them like, these are all the ones you could do. Just pick one of these and implement it, one simple little system and then see what happens for you. And by the time people do that, they see the results in their end, right?
Mark R. LePage:
The light bulb goes off. Oh, I get it. I mean, the systems are forced multipliers, right? You put a whole lot of effort into them upfront. They take a bunch of time to create, but then they start multiplying your time later because once you put it in that time, you invest that time and it actually starts to multiply the time later with the amount of time that you’ve saved by having the system in place. And the more you do that, the more more you end up having, you know, multiply the multipliers.
Ashley Gartland:
They’re amazing things. And it’s also such a great thing to have when you bring on team members, you know, as you’re growing your practice, it’s wonderful to be able to bring on a team member and not have to train them so much, but to say like, here’s how we do things. These are the systems we have. Here’s the checklist you follow. That’s it.
Mark R. LePage:
Yeah. Another way, in addition to checklists is screensharing because a lot of the systems that architects do might be graphic and so if you’re sort of, you know, putting together a new project and you’re putting together your your CAD drawing or your BIM model and you do that same thing. Every time that you onboard a new project, you can just click the screenshare software like Screenflow for Apple and Camtasia for PC and you can just record your screen and you can do the process that you do every time and now you haven’t recorded and you can look at that next time you do it or when you onboard somebody, you could just send them the video and say, Hey, this is how we do it.
Ashley Gartland:
Yeah. And that just takes one extra step, right? All you have to do is hit record and there’s another great tool called Loom. It’s a free screen recording program. I don’t know if you’ve ever used it, but it’s a great system because you can also do a video so you can have you on video and the screen recording going the same time, so it’s a great tool, especially for training people.
Mark R. LePage:
Yeah, that’s how I put together all my systems for EntreArchitect. I just sort of share my screen, talk to the screen while I’m doing what I’m doing, and then when I bring on a new team member I just say, okay, watch this video and then we’ll have a conversation about what you watched and it works. It works really well.
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So what’s the third one?
Ashley Gartland:
So we kind of talked a little bit about the delegating, right? Like once you’ve got these systems in place, it’s great to delegate and I hear so many fears around delegating. One, it’s like this business is my baby and I don’t want to pass it off to someone else. I don’t trust someone else. So there has to be a little bit of work there to get people past that and find the right people that they can trust. That’s the other big hurdle is like where can I find the right people to bring on? And then there’s the cost. You know, people fear that hiring people is going to take away too much profit from them or too much from their revenue. And so there’s a couple of responses to that. One is that if you can hire someone to do a $25 an hour task for you and you freeze you up to do a task, a project that’s going to net you $250 an hour, whatever the difference is, you start to see how their value is there. And then also sometimes that delegating doesn’t have to be to a contractor and a teammate or an employee. It can also be to a tool, you know, it might be that you’re employing some of these great tools like Freshbooks to do some of those work for you. And it creates more freedom for you for a very small monthly cost.
Mark R. LePage:
Right? So automation is sort of a delegation tool, right? So if you have a software like Freshbooks that does things automatically or some other tools, Zapier, you could set up a whole recipes, I don’t know if they call them recipes, I call them Zaps, basically, you know, when you do this task online, this happens automatically. So if there’s a process that you go through all the time, over and over again, you could actually set up some software that’ll happen automatically without you having to do it over and over again. I think that delegation, there is a big fear of delegation. I think a lot of it, like you said, it’s control and it’s money, right? You don’t want to lose the control or you don’t want to spend the time having to teach somebody else, but it’s easier for you to just do it, right.
Then there’s the money that you’re afraid that you’re not going to, to be able to afford them and you address both of those. And I think that, you know, delegation is a lot of mindset. You know, it’s a lot of getting over your thoughts and because it’s fear that’s stopping you from doing it. And then once you do it once, like you talked about with systems, if you do once, just do something small or, or delegate one simple task and see the result of that, then once you see that result than you get, you know, you see it, you’ve experienced the result and then you want to do more of that so I would say that delegation is a huge piece of making your business work, but there’s a lot of mindset that you have to get through to get to that first piece and if you just sort of chunk it down into little tiny pieces, you might be able to overcome the fear of doing that.
Ashley Gartland:
Yeah, I think a baby step approach to delegating is really important when you’re getting started with it. You know, I think about my first business. I didn’t delegate a single thing, like maybe very rarely I did, but I mostly did everything myself from the PR for my books to the transcribing all the interviews, like I could have outsourced a lot of those things and freed up my time for more creative projects. So in this business I have really relied on a small team and delegation to grow and that started from little small contract projects where I would ask my peers for a great referrals for an online business manager or a designer, you know, whatever person I needed to plug into my business at the time and then I would reach out to that person and ask them if we could start with a small project so that we could see how we work together so that I could see the effects of working with someone else in my business and that we worked together for like a month or on a single project. And then I was able to say, okay, that’s worth it, and then I could commit.
Mark R. LePage:
Yeah. What are your thoughts on delegating social media? From an architect’s point of view, a lot of. A lot of architects don’t want to do that stuff, but they know that it’s important. It’s part of marketing. So what are your thoughts on that?
Ashley Gartland:
So when I help clients delegate, what we do is we take, we make a list of all of the things that they do in their business and it’s usually a really long list. And they’re adding to it a lot. And then we look at that list and we say, what are the things on here that only you can do or that you love so much that you want to retain ownership of and it makes sense for you to retain ownership of those things. And we circle those things and that’s essentially your job description. Like that’s what you should be spending the majority of your time doing. And then you look at all the other stuff and you say, okay, who are the people who could fill these things in or who are the automations or the tools and systems that we could use to make these things, to delegate these things.
I think like you’re saying for architects that sounds like a lot of them are on social media is going to be there and they can delegate that to a VA, an online business manager if they really want to double down and really make their social media efforts strong. They might want to hire an expert who works in social media to run everything for them and do that. But I think if they’re looking at in terms of I can bring on an expert here to do my social media so that I can spend more time with my clients or spend more time on creative projects that will grow my business or being the face of my brand, whatever it is it’s going to be worth the value.
Mark R. LePage:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think that’s great. So what’s number four? What is your thought on number four?
Ashley Gartland:
So these last two, get a little bit more into mindset, a little less tactical things. Yeah. This one is about learning to say no because every time in our business we say yes to something we’re saying no to another opportunity, so this might be saying no to an opportunity. It might be saying no to a bad fit client. Someone who’s like, you could do the project, but it’s not really in your wheelhouse. It maybe you could give it a try, but when you say yes to those things, you’re saying no to working in your zone of genius to working in your area of expertise and really developing yourself as a the goto person in your niche. So I encourage my clients to start saying no and having some boundaries in place in their business to free up their time for the most important things in their business or things they want to get to in their life.
Mark R. LePage:
Every yes is a no to something else, right? I’ve heard that over and over again and it’s so true that every. I mean you’re only one person and you have only so much time and so much capacity. And if you say yes to everything, you’re overloaded and I’m sure you who are listening know exactly what we’re talking about because you’re probably overloaded. And so the saying no is so important. One of the things that I’ve said in the past is sometimes you make more money on the projects you don’t take, you know, that when you feel those red flags, when that intuition kicks in and say, this is not the right client or this is not the right project, this doesn’t fit my target market, you have to be able to say no. And that’s really hard, right? It’s hard to reject somebody, you know, or it’s hard to not take on a project even if, especially if you need that project, if you need that income, you know, you see the income that’s going to come with that project but you know that it’s not right. It’s so hard to say no but by saying no, it gives you the capacity to take the projects that are right for you, that will make you more money, that will make you happy and it will allow you to do more of the work that you really love to do. Really important is to be able to say no.
Ashley Gartland:
I think our nature or responses to say yes, you know, when we get out of fear of, you know, like when you get that project and you’re like, it’s not a good fit, but I need the money or I need the work so that the knee jerk reaction is to say yes. So what I encourage people to do is not immediately go to say no because that’s really hard for people. But just to start pausing and practice pausing those moments where you say, can I get back to you tomorrow? I’m gonna think on this. Make sure it’s a good fit. Can I get back to you tomorrow? I’ll make sure it fits into my schedule and is the right fit for me. And that gives you time to weigh the cost and if you just say yes, you don’t get to do that, but if you say, I’ll get back to you tomorrow, I’ll get back to you at the end of the day. Then you’re able to say, okay, what’s the cost of taking this project on?
Mark R. LePage:
Yeah, that’s good advice. Yep. To take a pause. So that’s a good takeaway. And, I love the the list for delegation. I think those are the two things so far. You should absolutely do. I think right now today you should go make that list, circle the things that you want to keep, and then figure out how to everything else. And then the, the idea of saying no, you know, make sure that you take that pause and you give yourself some time to, for one, you know, not only evaluate whether it’s right for you or not, but to give you some time to build up the courage to say no. Because sometimes that’s what it takes. You know it’s wrong, you know, that’s not right for you and you know, you should say no, but you just don’t have the courage yet to say no because we want to please everybody. Yes pleases the person who asks you the question. And so by saying yes, everybody’s happy, right? But then in the end you’re not happy because you should’ve said no and so that’s really, really important. So what’s number five?
Ashley Gartland:
Being proactive, not reactive. I will say that most of my clients come to me and tell me that they spend most of their days and their business putting out fires, you know, they’re answering emails all day. They’re dealing with challenges and issues and problems and they’re not actually getting to the most important work. The most important work is different for everybody, but it’s always the stuff that’s going to be income generating or big creative projects that they really want to get to and they know are gonna provide them with opportunities down the road. So what I encourage people to do is be really intentional and put the important work first. And for some people that looks like blocking out a day of the week or half a day, you know, Monday mornings they do their most important work and then the rest of the week they can spend good putting out fires. Some people it looks like spending the first hour of the day, like no opening the email, no checking in with team members, like spending that first hour of the day getting into some important work. And this is where your business really starts to grow because you’re so focused and so intentional with your time that you’re getting to those things that are income generating.
Mark R. LePage:
That takes a lot of discipline. Right? Yeah. So do you have any suggestions on how to sort of build those habits? Because we’ve talked about that in the past. It’s hard to build those habits. It’s hard to have those disciplines, especially with email, you know, the emails is screaming at you to check it into respond to it. Do you have any sort of rituals or habit building suggestions?
Ashley Gartland:
I think one is making the plan, right? Thinking about what’s gonna work best for you and if you know you’re an email first thing in the morning kind of person, then just commit into one day or if you know that you’re going to do the emails first thing in the morning and you want to actually put up some fires in your business and you need to do your important work in the evening, like just commit to a time block even if it’s just an hour a week. So I think the first thing that you need to do is have a plan and then give yourself permission to stick with it for awhile to build the habit and to see what it creates for you. And then as far as the habits go, it is just about practicing restraint and having some discipline with yourself and really understanding why you’re doing this. And it’s, I’m doing this, I’m committing to this important work because it’s actually, it’s going to help my business grow.
Mark R. LePage:
Yeah. Yeah. Time blocking is really super important and that means get it on your calendar. It means actually put it on your calendar. This is what you’re going to do at this time. The to do lists are great to make a list of everything that you need to do is really great, but you can’t work from a to do list because there’s no constraints. There’s no plan. Right? And a schedule and time blocking, actually putting it on recurring events on your calendar so you know that that’s what you’re doing and you treat them like a client. You treat them like an important meeting that if you’re having a meeting to sort of work out your day or to be creative or to respond to email, you have to be true to that. You can’t, you know, book another meeting over the top of that and saying, oh, that’s just my meeting, I can delete that and you know, have that client meeting in that time instead because then that meant that work doesn’t happen. And so that, that time blocking and being true to that time block is really important to build that discipline.
Ashley Gartland:
Yeah, and I think what you said there is really important that you have to honor it as a like a standing commitment. It can’t be like, well, I’ve got a little bit of extra stuff and it starts to bleed over into that time. You have to honor that container for yourself and give it to yourself and if that means that you need, you know, get on your calendar, but if it also means you need to have some accountability built in, you need to tell a partner, a team member, whoever it is, to tell to help you stick with it. Go ahead and do that.
Mark R. LePage:
Yeah, yeah, that’s good. Good advice. And you can do that electronically to. You could set reminders and alarms and say, okay, this is what I’m going to do when this reminder goes off for. Or maybe you send an alarm to remind you. Remind yourself to stay disciplined. Hey, just, you know, you wanted the time block, so set the alarm that this is the time you’re going to start and then maybe setting in another alarm like 15 minutes later and say, are you actually doing what you say you’re going to do just to sort of keep yourself accountable? You could use technology for that as well.
Ashley Gartland:
So these are, those things might seem ridiculous, right? Like a sign of weakness or like that you’re not disciplined enough, but if you, if that’s what you need to make it happen for yourself, do it. Like give yourself permission to do what works for you.
Mark R. LePage:
Yeah. And you don’t have to do it forever. You’re just sort of trying to build that discipline. Discipline is hard, you know, because you have a way of sort of just doing what you do all the time and you get into the habit of not doing the things that you should be doing. And so in order to replace those habits with new habits, you have to be disciplined and if you need to use tools or an accountability partner to establish those disciplines, then that’s what you need to do. If the ultimate goal is to build that simple business, is to build that lifestyle that you want. That’s what’s so important. You need to remind yourself of why you’re being disciplined. Why? Because it’s sometimes it’s painful to be disciplined but if you put in that little pain then that discipline becomes easier and easier. It’s like working out when you first start working out it hurts, but after a couple of weeks it doesn’t hurt so much, but you see the results over and over and over again. And so when you build those new habits and become more disciplined, you know, your life gets easier and you end up having a more simplified business, and a better life and you have more time to do the things you want to do. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
So let me just remind people. So number one is doing less better, sort of focus on the things that are most important. Number two is systems. So start building those systems if you haven’t already, you’ve heard me say that over and over and over again. So make sure that you do that. Number three is delegate. I love the idea of building that list.
Mark R. LePage:
Write down everything that you’re doing, everything, and I would say everything both in business and in life, but the whole list down and circle the things that you know are non negotiable. These are the things that I either have to do or the things that I want to do and then there’s gonna be a lot more things that you’re doing that you don’t want to be doing or you shouldn’t be doing, and then figure out how you’re going to do that. Number four is learning to say no, so that’s easier said than done, but let’s do that. Number five is to be proactive, proactive, not reactive. Yeah. So get out there and be more disciplined, sort of build the things that you know, that needs to be done and not be reactive to the crises of others. That’s great list. I love that. I think that will help people tremendously. Is there anything else that we should sort of be focused on from a high level point of view that sort of would help us get to where we want to go?
Ashley Gartland:
These are the core things. I think you also need to be really clear on why you want to simplify because like you said, it sounds like a really nice thing, but you have to really understand what you want to create and if that means the freedom to like live the laptop lifestyle and go travel around and be able to shut your business down for a month every year and take a sabbatical, then that’s what you’re going for. If you’re a freedom looks like being able to pick your kids up at school and be the person who picks them up everyday at three. Like you got to really connect to your why and then this process becomes a lot easier.
Mark R. LePage:
Yeah. Yeah. So if you, when you hear simplified business, it’s about doing the things that need to be done to do less better. It’s what you said is that sort of the goal here is to do less better because we all want to have that life that we dream of and the only way to get there is to do these things, is to build, build the plans and execute and get disciplined because the other side of that is freedom. The other side of that is to live the life that you really want to live. So really, really good stuff. Thank you very much, Ashley, for, for sharing those before we wrap up here, I want to have asked you that one final question that I ask everybody. What is one thing that a small firm architect can do today to build a better business for tomorrow?
Ashley Gartland:
I’m going to go back to that fifth step that we talked about. I think the one thing that you can do is to prioritize your most important work and I know it’s going to look different for every firm who’s listening, right? And every architect who’s listening right now, but like think about what is that project that you really know would make a difference in your business. Think about the client that you need to serve, like whatever that important work look like to you. Find a block of time for it and it just has to be, you know, an hour a week if that’s all you can do.
Mark R. LePage:
Yeah. So important. So important. So your website is AshleyMGartland.com. If you want to learn more about Ashley or learn more about our programs, check out AshleyMGartland.com, a great Facebook group called The Simplified Entrepreneur. You could search The Simplified Entrepreneur on Facebook. Go check that out and go join that group. If you’re interested on Instagram, it’s @AshleyGartland. If you want to send an email to Ashley and say thank you for sharing your knowledge here today. It’s Ashley@AshleyMGartland.com. Ashley, thank you very much for joining me here today, sharing your knowledge with the listeners here at EntreArchitect.
Hey, if you want to get that guy that Ashley mentioned, five steps to simplify, you can get that today at AshleyMGartland.com/simplify. You can get that today right now, and this is Episode 228 and I encourage you to go share that link with a friend. Go shared on Twitter, on Facebook, on Linkedin, send it by email. Tell your friend across the room. That’s the only thing I asked you to do is share it with your friend. You can go, go review it on itunes and give us five stars. Whatever you want to do it. That’s great. I love when I see that, but what I really want you to do, I really want you to share that link with a friend and share what Ashley’s sharing her knowledge with us. I want your friends to to to benefit from that as well because that’s how we’re showing the world what we’re doing here. That’s how the world is learning what we’re doing here at EntreArchitect. There are hundreds of thousands of architects who don’t even know what we’re doing here. That’s insane. We need the whole world of EntreArchitects to be here with us at the EntreArchitect community, so share this link. EntreArchitect.com/Episode228. That’s all I ask. And tag me so I know you did it. Learn how to earn that elusive 20 percent profit. That’s the number that you should be earning. Twenty percent you can do it. Download our free course will show you how EntreArchitect.com/freecourse. It’s a free course that will show you how to be profitable. What’s better than that? EntreArchitect.com/freecourse. My name is Mark R. LePage and I am an entrepreneur architect and I encourage you to go build a better business so you can be a better architect. Love, learn, share what you know. Thanks for listening and have a great week.
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