359 Solo Q1 Update! Time Studies, Mindset Shifts, 3 Types of Businesses & More!
How to Transform Challenges Into Growth Opportunities for Entrepreneurs
Q1 Wrap-Up
It’s just me today, your host, and I’m sitting down to reflect on the wrap-up of Q1 and all the exciting opportunities (& challenges!) that come with a fresh season.
Honestly, the rhythm of entrepreneurship is such a ride, and I want to share how I’ve been balancing high-energy days with quieter moments for creativity and reflection.
I’ll walk you through some personal highlights and the challenges I faced over the last few months, like navigating a jam-packed schedule with limited childcare, tracking key business metrics (yes, I’m obsessed!), and leaning into the energy that a new season brings!
We’ll also chat about why goal setting feels so aligned during Q2 and the difference between building a business from passion, past profession versus solving a problem.
I also open up about learning to stay flexible and keeping the energy light hearted in the home & in general... to make both life and business flow easier.
Episode Time Stamps:
[03:57] Recognizing what season of business you are in.
[07:03] Releasing the attachment and knowing the right clients will be finding me.
[17:59] Focusing on Controlling the Controllable
To connect with Kelsey:
Access the transcript for this episode:
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You're listening to the Visionary Life Podcast. I'm your host, Kelsey Reidl.
Each week I'll bring you conversations with the most visionary humans on this earth in hopes that you'll be able to absorb their wisdom, avoid their failures, and feel less alone on the roller coaster ride that is entrepreneurship. This season, I'll be chatting with creative thinkers, masterful marketers, brick and mortar shop owners, brand builders, and people just like you who have a story to share or a vision that inspires. If I can share one quick secret with you before we get into the episode, it's that we all have a little bit of visionary inside of us. You know, that spark that nudges us to pursue our full potential in this lifetime. But perhaps somewhere along the line, it got covered up. I'm here to tell you that it's never too late to explore that inner voice and access the brilliance deep down inside of you. It's in you. It's in all of us. Let's dive in. Hey, visionaries. Welcome back to another episode of the pod. So it's March 31st when I'm recording this, which means it's the last day of Q1. So if you look at your business or your life in chunks, sometimes this can be a bit of a monumental day where you're like, whoa, we are one quarter through the year. And it really starts to make you think about, what do I want to change? What do I want to keep? Are there any rituals or habits that I hope to incorporate into Q2 or just into the next season of my life? Whether it's health or relationship or different home habits or whatever it is, I think this is such a cool time to set goals, to kind of revamp your vision and to reset. Because sometimes December, January can be a bit of a weird time to do goal setting when we're all kind of in this more contractive, introverted space. Sometimes you just want to cozy up and read your book and not be like, all right, starting January 1st, I'm going to hit the gym. It's more of a season of rest, but I really do believe that come April 1st, there's this new energy. We're hitting the springtime, longer days, and this is actually a really cool time to set goals. And I've shared this many times on the podcast before, but April in the service business, I deliver marketing consulting services to clients. It's actually one of our busiest times. And I track my number numbers, just like basic data, month over month. And I've been tracking for about five or Six years now. And what I see is that April is always the highest revenue month. Now, I don't know if that's something that I'm bringing to the table. Like it's not influenced externally, but maybe it's more like internal. So perhaps I look at April differently. I put a different mojo into April, or perhaps there is something economically or in the world that's going on and consumer behaviors where people just feel more motivated to spend money. But I want to share that. Not to bring you behind the scenes of like every single month and which months you have the most potential, but perhaps there are trends in your sales. Maybe you always know that December is the biggest month for you, so you prepare and perhaps take a bit of extra rest in October, November, and then hit it hard in December. For me, knowing that April's big, I, I never, I never panic if end of Feb, early March is a little bit quiet because I know that the year over year data shows that in April, everything always balances out. So this is always my reminder to track your business metrics, track your marketing numbers so that you don't panic every single time a month comes along that you're like, oh my gosh, we're not on track, we're not hitting targets. There are gonna be so many highs, so many lows. And it's important to recognize that everything's a season, that if we know the patterns, we don't have to panic when there's a anomaly or there's a dip or there's a spike. So I thought I would do a solo episode. It's just going to be super casual. I'm just kind of sitting here having a bit more of a quiet day because on Friday we hosted a event in Paris, Ontario with 50 female entrepreneurs. And it was so fulfilling. It was so awesome. You can go to my social media or my Instagram at Kelsey Ryle if you want to see photos. It was just a wonderful group, a wonderful day of plugging into the most incredible entrepreneurs in Ontario. And then after the day I crashed, like Saturday, Sunday, it was like, peel me off the couch, I don't want to move. And I'm still feeling a little of that energy today of like, I don't want to hustle today. I want to still soak in what happened, all the work that went into it. So anyways, I thought I'd record, record a solo episode just to catch you up, bring you up to speed on what's going on, maybe share some highlights. Yeah, let's do that. Okay, so I'M going to start with some highlights and some challenges of Q1. And this is basically like my verbal reflection because I'm not a journaler. I'm going to admit, you know how everyone's like, oh yeah, I get up at 5am and I journal. I'm like, what? I barely ever journaled in my life. It's just not something that works. And yeah, that's just, that's me. So I'm going to verbally journal. That's what I feel like the podcast is and has been for the past seven years. I'm basically just talking through my thoughts and you get to read my diary. So here we go. Okay, so if I were to write a list of highlights, my contract with Toronto Metropolitan University wrapped up. This was the first time I worked with them on their digital marketing program. So that was cool. I got to go to Toronto on a day trip and record three live podcasts, some of which you have heard already and some that are still going to air. I had incredible one on one clients. We have clients right now who are functional nutritionists, clients who are self publishing guides who help you get your book written. We have clients who are strategic coaches and who are executive and leaders coaches. There's just such a wide variety of people that I'm supporting right now. Couple website remodels, a couple rebrands. It's just so cool to be able to help people when they feel like they've got so much inside of them, but the marketing knowledge, the marketing strategy, the marketing playbook, simply isn't there. And lots of cool conversations that I've had over the last few weeks, some with real estate agents, one with an artist who has been selling out retreats in Italy and in Greece and now is just looking for a little more structure in her marketing and with a event planning agency. So who knows? Trying to just kind of release attachment and know that the right clients are always finding me. I know that's hard sometimes when somebody sends you an email and they're like, hey, we've decided to go a different way. I don't know if you guys have ever gotten that email. I get it almost weekly at this point, right? Because I get on calls with a lot of people, I'm always chatting with people, and my services aren't for everybody. So I get a lot of these emails after sending proposals that say, hey, we've decided to go a separate way or a different way or we've chosen someone else. And it's always a gut punch. Like it's like A dagger and Dave will come home at the end of the day and I'll just be like, oh, I just like, I really need to shake this. And it's tough, but you do get better at it. But all in all, so many incredible clients. I had some really cool wins along the fact that two people over the last quarter have said, I found you on Chachi pt and I absolutely love that. So I am actually teaching a training inside of our Wave mastermind how to rank on LLM. So AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok, Jasper, how do you tweak your website SEO your online presence so that you can also hear those words? I found you on ChatGPT. I also hosted a really fun Google reviews challenge with one of my corporate clients. All of them got so many more reviews. We talked about so many ways that you can make it easy for people to leave your review because the tendency is like, oh yeah, I'll do that. And then they never do. We got so many testimonials being like, yeah, I use the template. Got the review. I texted her, got the review. So many, many wins there. And last but not least, on Friday we hosted the event. 50 women sold out. Just absolutely crazy to have that much demand on an in person event. And that was a huge win as well. And maybe I'll talk a bit more about the event. I usually do event recaps on, on my podcast. Okay, now let's talk about the challenges. If you are an entrepreneur, you know that really there's never enough time in the day. And that's a story that I've been working to change. I always talk about how one of my friends, Sarah, I was doing a photo shoot with her many years ago and I just said to her, you know Sarah, there's just never enough time in the day. And she said, kelsey, there's always enough time in the day. You just need to focus on your priorities. And I was like, oh, that was such a truth bomb. And she just told me that. So I mean, I feel like I have a legitimate excuse. So I, I only have two days of childcare. I mean I, not only I could have more, but right now we've decided that's the best balance for our family. So I'm trying to run a full time business on a two day work week, plus a couple naps. Which means that when I sit down on a Tuesday or a Wednesday to have my work day, it's calls mostly clients. 10am, 11am, 12, 1, 2, 3. So my creative energy has Been zapped, zapped, zapped, zapped. It's gone. And how I know this is because this past Wednesday, I had a couple of people reschedule, and I didn't want to block anything into that day additionally, because I knew the event was on Friday and that I'd have to, like, go to Staples and pick things up and I'd have to prepare and get all our ducks in a row and make sure the final emails went out and coordinate with the venue and go pay the invoice. So I left the day open. So I just had one call on Wednesday, and it was our group mastermind. And that also meant that I had from 9:30am until 1:00pm with nobody in the house and a to do list, but also a lot of space because we were pretty organized for the event. And I just created and created and created and created and created and I let my brain wander and I sat here and I wrote blog posts and I jotted down ideas for social media, and I caught up on little projects that I hadn't. Hadn't had time for. And so, yeah, it's been a challenge to really balance wanting to get my work done in two days, but then having those days being eaten up by calls, so working on other people's businesses. So that's one thing that I'm currently problem solving for. I also had pneumonia in February. That was wild. So, so sick. Probably the most sick I've ever been in my life. Maybe that was in March, I don't remember. And it took probably like a good two, maybe almost three weeks to feel like I was on the other side of it. It was actually the first time that I canceled clients in probably five years, six years. Because when you work online, like, even if you have a headache, you can kind of just take a Tylenol and get through it. And I did that for day one of my flu. And then it was just like death, right? I. I told people I was on my deathbed, so I had to cancel work. And that sucked because then I was backlogged and felt like I was scrambling a little bit for weeks after that. But all is well. All is good. I am healthy. It just reminded me how important our health is as entrepreneurs. And I have to remind myself of that all the time because I'm by no means perfect. But, like, when I don't want to take my supplements, I'm like, just pause, do the thing. And there's this rule that goes around. I don't know, you guys have probably heard it before, but it's like, if something takes less than 30 seconds, don't keep putting it off. Like, just do the thing. So I'm really guilty of this. Sometimes I look at my inbox and I just, like, don't want to answer the email, or I don't want to log into Stripe and, like, collect my payment data, or I don't want to answer a call or make a phone call. I don't want to take my supplements because, like, I have to walk up. You know, like, there's these stupid little things. And if you start to think about this as you go through your day, you'll notice that sometimes you just, like, kick the can down the line. And so I've really tried to catch myself, and I'm doing better at it. Like, if something's going to take less than 30 seconds, just do it. Like, fold the two T shirts and put them in your closet instead of just, like, pushing them down the dresser or moving them to another spot. And in our house, we also try to do something called the one touch rule. And I learned this from Sarah's Day, the Instagram and YouTube account. And it's like, okay, so if you have a family, if you're a parent, you know that the house can get really, really chaotic. Like, our house gets disgusting in 4.2 seconds. And so bringing in any clutter or, like, specifically. Let me share an example. Dave will come home from work and bless his soul and love him to death, but he always brings his keys. He takes off his shoes, brings his keys in and throws them on the kitchen island. Like, instead, I'm laughing because it is funny. And I just, you know, at this point, I'm like, whatever, you know, there's not enough time in the day to worry about everything. And this is not harming anyone. But, okay, so picture this. He walks in. There's a key rack right there. But he likes to come in and throw them so that they aggressively drop on the kitchen counter, make a horrible noise. I look at them now, I just giggle because I'm like, is there enough energy? Is it worth my time to actually care about this anymore? No, but we have this rule where it's like, okay, so those keys are there. Now, instead of, like, picking up the keys and, like, moving them over to the coffee table, one touch rule is like, pick it up and put it in the spot that it belongs. Because sometimes when you, like, do little tidying, it's like, okay, I'm just going to, like, pick up this pile of clothes and just, like, move it to the Staircase. And it's like. But then we have to pick it up again. So you basically just did nothing. So one touch is like, pick up the thing, put it in the spot it belongs. So anyways, perhaps that resonates with you. It's a super duper hack for not just like rummaging through clutter and putting it in new spaces, new places. I find it's really worked for our household. And sometimes we'll look at each other when I'm like, picking up a candle and like, moving it somewhere else, he's like, one touch, like, where does it belong permanently? Or do we just need to get rid of it? I mentioned too that, like now when things. I don't know if it's since becoming a parent or just, you know, as you get older, you're just more emotionally mature now. When things bother me, I just, like, don't even let them bother me. And I just, like, take a second. I'm like, how can I just make this funny? Or how can I make a joke or just entertain whatever's happening and keep it light? Because there's enough heavy energy in the world. So the last thing we need is to, like, have heavy energy in the household. I don't know if anyone else feels like that. And it's easier said than done. But if you really shine a spotlight on, like, how you want to react to things, usually it's just like, so dumb, the things we want to say or the way we can cause chaos, or just be like, well, you didn't do this thing. Instead, just be like, oh, man, yeah, taxes do suck. Like, promise I'm gonna get better this year. Let me call our bookkeeper, we'll sort it out instead of having, like a full blown meltdown. So anyways, there's me admitting to you that it's just, just better to sometimes, like, put your ego aside, check your dramatic tone of voice at the door, and just, you know, keep life more enjoyable. And we have the power to do that. I think it's always. It comes back to internally, what can I change? And I think that's just such a good life lesson because even for all of you listening, who are entrepreneurs, like, there's always, like the external forces at work, but then there's also the internal factors at play. Externally, the world is chaos. Political landscape is weird economically. You know, people are in a recession or, like, contracting their spending, right? Well, fine, we can't change the external forces, but what can you change internally? And so often that is the secret sauce. That's why Some businesses are thriving right now and others aren't. That's why some entrepreneurs are positive in this timeframe and others aren't. So, yeah, I think sometimes it's important to ask, like, can I control the external or should I focus on the internal? Speaking of recognizing things that I can control, I want to share a little bit of an epiphany that I had over the last couple of weeks. So I mentioned that we were gearing up, planning this really big event. I still had a lot of work on my to do list for private clients, for a couple consulting projects. And even though I'm a natural, naturally high energy person, I also was starting to feel like there's just a lot going on. And if I want to protect the time that I have with our family and I still want to be able to do all the fun activities like go to the park in the evening, bake fresh bread, and make muffins for Freddy, I am going to need to look for efficiencies. And at our event on Friday, some of you were there. We had one of the speakers talk about doing a time study. Actually, a couple of them talked about doing a time study because someone went up and asked a question around boundaries and how to manage time from slipping away if you're just on social media and, you know, just wasting time. And they both kind of said, like, you have to do a time study because using the excuse I don't have time is not a good excuse. You can always find time for the things that matter to you. And so as I was starting to feel like my cup was like overflowing in a bad way last week, I realized that there was some things I was doing that were driving our life crazy. Number one, I was still grocery shopping. And I love grocery shopping. So hear me out. Like, I went to school to become a nutritionist many years ago. I really enjoy a grocery store experience. It doesn't stress me out. I like wandering the aisles. I like seeing what's, what's, you know, what the new trends are and what people are buying. I actually like creeping on other people's carts. Like, I find this whole experience enjoyable. But of course it also takes time. And when you don't do it, it means you don't have food in the fridge. I like picking things up and not paying shipping fees. So if I know that I can drive to Staples, pick up the order that I submitted instead of paying for shipping, or instead of making like, I find the whole idea of like somebody else dropping things at my house and like, them having to work through the day to do that. I guess I just, like, would rather do it myself, which is probably a complex on its own, like, feeling like I can do it all. Admin stuff that I feel like I need to hold on to. Going to the health food store instead of ordering online. I think part of it too is like, I want to support small businesses, but then sometimes I can't get out between the hours of 10 and 4 when they're open. So you can kind of see the conversation that's going on in my head. It's like, I want to do all these things, but if it's not happening or if it's taking away from family or it's stressing me out because, like, I need the natural toothpaste from the health food store, but it's never open and I can't get there. And then we don't have toothpaste. I was kind of thinking, like, what am I doing? Like, why am I making life so complicated? What if I stop trying to do it all? That's it. What if I stop trying to do it all? What if I am relentless about the fact that I'm in a season of life? And Dave reminded me of this, where it's okay to order stuff online. I don't know what my resistance is. It's like, I know most people, they just, they order everything online. But, like, I just hate the idea of this. I won't order clothes online. Which is again, there's another. This is why sometimes I'm like, I don't know what to wear. Like, I need some new bras. But yeah, so I gave all that up last week and I said, something's got to give. I. I'm just going to activate every online shopping account, go buy everything on my list, and it's going to take five minutes. And it did. And I got it all done. I know this is like such a dumb thing to share on a podcast, but I hope it helps one of you who's listening feeling like you have a massive to do list a lot on your plate and just recognize that there's probably some things that mentally you're struggling to let go of that actually could free up the weight of the world on your shoulders and you don't have to carry that burden around. So what is it? Do you need to do a time study? Track everything you're doing in a day in 15 minute increments and then analyze it like, what are code red? I shouldn't be doing that. I wasted too much time there, that was not a joyful experience and I could pay $2 to have somebody ship that to me. So I wanted to share that because maybe a light will go off in your head of something you should no longer be doing, especially if you have big dreams elsewhere. And wandering the aisles of the grocery store is maybe something that can be offloaded while you build out your really big dreams. Speaking of big dreams, I listened to a really great podcast. I think it was Diary of a CEO and Alex Hormozi. And if you're looking for some inspiring business content with frameworks and just like really insightful lessons about entrepreneurship, it's a great episode. And one thing I really liked was at the beginning of the episode, Alex Hormozi shared this framework for the three types of businesses you should start. And he basically talked about the fact that you can either start a business to solve a problem, usually a problem that you experienced in the past. So have you suffered from something? Did you struggle to learn something five years ago that now you can offer the solution to said problem and really empathize with the customer or client because you've been through it. So that's business type number one. Business type number two is you can start a business based on past experience. This is kind of what I did. In a way, this is part of the equation. But I was working for health food company as a marketing manager, and when I left, I did marketing freelancing, and I felt really confident because I was basically doing the thing that there was already demand for, really at every single company and starting a freelance business. So I knew that the demand was there. So first one is to solve the problem. Second one is because you have past experience or a skill set somewhere. The third one is out of passion. This is out of something you're really excited about. But perhaps there may not be demand or you're not exactly sure what the market is, but those are really the three reasons why you could start a business. So. So I wanted to share this with you guys today and first ask you, did you start your business to A, solve a problem, B, because you had past experience and you saw demand, easy demand for it, or C, because you have a passion for something. And my guess is that most of you are listening, going kind of all three, right? Like you love solving the problem and maybe experience the problem. You came with a skill set from your past career path and you also feel passionate about it. But where this framework really shines through, I think, is if you feel like you are struggling, like people aren't catching on, they're not buying from you, they're not noticing, and perhaps there's an opportunity. So if your business is too much out of passion, but it doesn't solve a problem, and you don't see that this skill set is already in demand in the workforce, right? So, like if you're an accountant, for example, and you quit your accountant job, you know that you will have work because everybody in business needs an accountant. There's already built up demand. It's proven in the workforce. Same with graphic designers, for example. But if you are doing something and you don't see it as an existing career path, especially in corporate, because that's where we see, like, what has proven demand in terms of job opportunity, then you might be in a position where you actually have to aggravate the problem and show people why is this important. So if you're a life coach, for an example, most corporate companies, most workforces around the world do not have a life coach on staff. And that might be because people didn't even really know what a life coach does. They don't know what problems they might be experiencing. But you might tell a really epic story. You're super passionate about life coaching, and you might tell an amazing story about how you were basically, like, at your rock bottom. You lost your job. You had always wanted to start a jewelry business, but were so fearful to take action, your relationship had crumbled, so you were rebuilding and you found a life coach who helped you put all of the pieces in place to get your life together, start the dream business, and now you work full time for yourself. So the storytelling around the problem can actually help you to build demand. But I wanted to share this equation just so you can kind of look at it. Even if you draw a Venn diagram, like, you're either solving a problem, teaching from past experience, or sharing a skill set from past experience, or you are pursuing the route of passion, which might be the harder route. But if you lean into storytelling, it won't be hard at all. So highly recommend listening to that episode. I just thought that was an interesting framework. And he also shares something interesting that oftentimes the people who start their businesses to serve the past skill set that they have, they're often the ones that maybe they resented their corporate job, but then they end up resenting their entrepreneurial journey, too, because they're like, well, I'm doing the same thing and I still don't like it. All right, so I think we're going to wrap it here. I really just wanted to share a solo. We have lots of amazing interviews coming up. I would say another win from the last quarter was interviewing the founders of Mint Cleaning and that episode is coming up on the podcast. They're two really bubbly women out of you clue lit BC I probably said that wrong, but they were on Dragon's Den, a show that I absolutely love and I remember watching Dragon's den nearly like 15 years ago. I used to watch episodes on my very first laptop. So, so crazy. So yeah, we've got lots of good stuff coming. I'll keep this one short, but if you have any feedback, any requests, ideas for guests, I would love to hear from you. And other than that, I hope you have a really amazing week and we will see you next time. Hey Visionary, I want to interrupt this episode to share a little bit more about one on one coaching. I work with clients who want to stay on top of the latest marketing trends, who want to bring more ease into their marketing funnel or just build a marketing funnel in the first place because maybe you don't have one yet and ultimately take the effort and overwhelm out of your marketing plan. I know your energy is limited and you just want someone to tell you what to do. Should you be on thread? Should you be creating on TikTok? How do you grow an email list? What does SEO mean? Anyways, this is why I offer private one on one business and marketing coaching for business owners like you who need help with their marketing strategy. You can head to kelseyridle.com private coaching to learn exactly what it's going to look like if we decide to work together. And I'm excited because I can give you the precise strategies that will take your business to the next level this year. So if you want to learn more KelseyRidle.com Private coaching of course it is a bit more of an investment than any of my other courses or offerings, but my private clients are seeing crazy results. Christina landed a six figure consulting contract. Emily signed six clients in one day. Barb had a Black Friday sale that generated a lot of money and these are all based on the strategies that we've implemented. So kelseyridle.com private coaching you can learn all about it. You can see all of the amazing visionary businesses that I've worked with and supported over the last decade and I can't wait to see your application come through kelseyridle.com private coaching now back to the episode. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Visionary Life. I love bringing you these conversations on a weekly basis so it would mean so much to me if you could help me out by rating and reviewing the show on either itunes or Spotify. It just takes a second. And if you don't want to rate the show, you could also just take a screenshot of the episode and share it on your social media platform of choice. Tagging me at Kelsey Reidl. I'll catch you in the next episode.
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