Your Effortless Business
When your business works, you get to live
You look around at other businesses. You know you don’t want to fall into the trap of believing their social media image, but you can’t help thinking that they aren’t working as hard as you, worrying as much as you or are as unsatisfied as you.
You look at Sally who lost her corporate job a couple of years ago and began consulting. Every time you meet her, she’s working on interesting projects, her podcast is gaining traction and she has been invited to speak at a couple of local events. You can see she has her act together and you wish you were more like Sally.
You look at Charles, who has steadily built his therapeutic massage practice over the years. His client list includes people you read about in the papers and he is selling a line of products. You can see he has his act together and you wish you were more like Charles.
You look at Maggie who started her coaching business a couple of years ago and is promoting a high-end retreat to Chang Mai. Her clients rave about her and she’s all over social media with her amazing life style. You can see she has her act together and you wish you were more like Maggie.
I’ve worked with people like Sally, Charles and Maggie before they had their acts together. I helped Sally get off her networking and pay-for-hours-worked treadmill. I helped her carve out the time to start her podcast and helped her get it up and running. I helped Charles focus on providing an amazing customer experience and showed him how to help his clients share their story to attract even more of the best customers. I helped him realize that choosing to start a line of products and making it happen would help him reach his overall goals. Maggie and I worked together to put all her knowledge and experience into her programs and get amazing results for her clients. Her retreats are a natural extension of those results.
Making your effortless business isn’t about finding the best systems and shoe-horning them into place. It’s a systematic review of every aspect of your business
Join Your Effortless Business Program
make your business work for you
11 Essential Algorithms
Only 12 spots available
| Registration for the first module ends September 30 or when we’re full. Only $2,500 | Or lock in your position for all 4 modules and save $2000 by paying in full in advance CDN $8000 | ||
|---|---|---|---|
Don’t delay, take action now!
Every business is a snow flake, but at another scale every business is the same. I’ve worked with 1000s of small business owners in all types of business at every stage and in every industry. I see the similarities and the uniqueness of your business. I know what ideas, practices and concepts cross business types, industries and stages. I know how you can automate your business so that you can bring the best of you to your customers.
What does Effortless mean in your business?
It means that you work from a place of knowledge, data and experience to get massive results for the effort you put in
It means you only do what brings you results. We apply the Pareto Principle
It means you decide how much time you want to put in
It means you decide how profitable to make your business – don’t believe me? Google your business type and success and you will find businesses like yours getting amazing results. You can do that too. I will help you
Your Effortless Business PROGRAM
The 11 Essential algorithms are divided into 4 areas of your business and we will work on one each quarter. We are taking it one step at a time to give you steady, sustainable progress
The Foundations Module
October to December, 2018
Owner’s plan
You build your business for you and every decision comes from your needs and strengths. You need a way to check in regularly and evaluate your business against your needs.
Everything that follows builds on what you bring and what you need from your business.
You get everything you need to take that deep dive into what is important to you. Together we use that information to adjust the way your business is set up so that you get everything you need from your business. You set up processes to loop back and use this information in every decision you make.
Business Strategy
How do you define success? How does your customer? How will you get to the appropriate size, scale and quality of business you want? Your business strategy loops in your customers’, team’s and your community’s realities and needs.
You get templates, examples, stories, guidance and feedback as you create your strategic plan. You design your day so that you have time to work on reaching your strategic goals. You design in processes for testing and adding in data as you get it
Financial Management
You automate payments, money flow and accounting. We put checks and balances in place to stay on top of your financial needs. I owned a bookkeeping business for 15 years. You are in good hands here. I learned how to translate financial information into actionable business practices.
With these 3 done, you now have everything you need to design and build all the pieces in your business.
Customer’s Journey Module
January to March, 2019
Delight your customer
A big piece of this is communication – having a process and templates to make it easy. This is important for making sure you are doing exactly and only what is important to your customers. Delighting your customers is what attracts your next customers and more importantly it is the key to making maximum profit. This is all about value exchange and making it work for both sides.
You get the exact questions and surveys that work to help you uncover the most important information. It is this piece that is the difference between struggling to get customers and to make a great living and having a business that attracts the best customers who are happy to pay you a premium. We examine examples of businesses that are doing this well and mine them for the pieces that work for your business. You learn how to adjust and apply those examples for your business.
Tell Customer’s Stories
You put processes in place for gathering these stories and sharing them in the most appropriate ways.
There are almost as many ways and permutations around how to do this as there are small business owners. The most important part of the work we will do is finding the way that works best for you, your skills and talents, your customers, and your business. The tactics for each piece are the easy part. I have a curated treasure trove of everything you need.
Customer Engagement
This is a critical piece that is often overlooked and done on the fly. It should be the deliberate process of welcoming a potential customer and putting them on the path to becoming a delighted customer. You test, measure and implement what works best so that it is smooth and effortless.
You get the process for how to uncover what is working in your business. You get examples, stories, templates and tools of how other businesses are doing this exceptionally well.
With the Customer Journey module working, you have happy customers and a stead flow of money coming in.
Team’s Journey Module
April to June 2019
Team development
You will implement a process to create and execute on a learning or development plan for your team. You will build in check points and feedback. staff stay an average of 3-5 years and usually as long as they continue to develop and grow. This piece is critical in attracting and keeping the very best staff.
You learn how other businesses do this with wild success and we work together until you have a process that has you attracting the very best team members who are engaged and stick with you. Sounds like a dream, but many other small business owners have done this and so can you.
Team Stories
Again, a process to gather, compile and tell team stories. Some of these will be exit interviews and continued followup because your former employees can be amazing brand ambassadors.
You learn the best ways for you to gather those stories, turn them into compelling content and share them. Tactics are the easy part, we do the harder work of figuring out the best way for you.
Team onboarding
Onboarding is important in building culture. Your team members can’t treat your customers better than they are treated. Onboarding sets the expectations.
You design a different onboarding process for team members not in your pay. You design a process to share your culture and communicate it so they can support you in the best way they can.
I designed an award-winning onboarding tool and you get it! Plus all the feedback and support you need to make it work for you.
With your Team’s Journey module done, you have engaged people in place doing the work.
Put it all together Module
July – September, 2019
Project Management
Project management is high level delivery of everything necessary to carry out all the other algorithms. It’s where you make sure things aren’t working against each other and you look for synergies and cross-supports. I managed multi million dollar construction projects and my job was to understand what everyone needed to do their job and make sure it was there when they needed it. That’s what you will do here.
You will be managing the environment to support the results. Managing the experience so everyone feels served. Managing the value exchange so it is robust for everyone.
You follow the step-by-step procedure for setting up a project management system that holistically, thoroughly and effortlessly makes sure everything is covered and in place.
Feed back Mechanisms
If you want to constantly improve, you need mechanisms in place to check, test, gather data and evaluate that data to mine it for improvements. We’re small business so we don’t have to pretend to care by using big data, but that doesn’t mean that we should ignore the data and not use what we have.
Many of these are designed in as we go, this is our last check to make sure we leave nothing out. More importantly we make sure the information we gather with your data is fed back into your system to make continual improvements.
This final module makes sure all the pieces work together holistically and with synergy
Trying to take someone else’s system and shoe-horn it into your business only leaves you frustrated when you don’t get the same results. It’s vital to do it your way and that is part of why this complete program takes a year.
Your Effortless Business Program is for you if
- You want a clean, easy and effortless business. You want to actively strip away what you don’t need in business and only put in place the processes and system that will serve your business.
- You believe business can be effortless. Simple, but not necessarily easy. You know that if you design your business right, put the best systems in place, it can be effortless. You are prepared to do that work and I can help you get it right.
- You know that you can find the information ‘out there’, but you want the right information for you. There is no shortage of information about what you need to do in your business. You know that most of it won’t work for you and you have a sense that much of what the experts tell you to do in business, just isn’t true.
- You are open to making your business as simple as you can. There are plenty of people who can help you make your business complicated so that you get to work hard and feel important. My focus is on making your business as simple as possible while making plenty of profit.
Your Effortless Business Program is NOT for you if:
- You are happy with where you are in life and business. You like the amount of effort you are putting into your business and the results you are getting.
- You are afraid that if you join, I will tell you to make big sweeping changes. I won’t. It’s unlikely you need big sweeping changes. It’s not my place to tell you what to do. You know your business and yourself best. I will tell you stories of what others in similar situations did. You can take the parts that work for you and I will help you weave them into what you are doing now.
- You don’t like change. Insanity is doing the same things and expecting different results. Being a part of a program in itself will not give you different results. You have to engage and be willing to do the work. You will have the support and the examples of everyone else in the group to help you keep moving forward.
- $2500 is too much or too little for you. If this will put your rent payment in jeopardy, don’t do it. Or if this is too little to really motivate you, don’t bother. This should feel like it gives you incentive to do the work. You will have everything you need to get the results you want, but I can’t make you do the work. You have to do that. The price is part of that motivation.
- You are looking for the magic bullet, perfect answer, done-for-you business handed to you on a silver platter. I don’t do voodoo and I won’t work harder than you to make this work for you. I will do all I can, but I won’t do more than you do. Make sense?
This is a hybrid Program
Personal 1:1 coaching and the best of the shared resources and the power of a group.
| You | Group | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 one to one coaching calls every month($250 each x 6 = $1500) | Valuable, jam-packed, 90 minute, discussion-based, live video training following the program and responsive to the current needs of the group ($150 each x 3 = $450 value) | ||
| Your personal google folder including the resources I find for you and all the information you need. You get feedback, answers to your questions, relevant exercises and I point out areas for deeper exploration and work. Think of it as part workbook, part journal, part dialogue, with a smattering of motivation and gamification. ($750 value ) | join in live weekly virtual office hours where we get together online to check in, hold accountability and help each other. Ask me anything. ($100 each x 12 = $1200 value) |
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| You get personalized resources, tools, hints, tips, tricks, hacks as you need them. I have prepared lessons in most aspects of business. I scour the best places to find the latest resources and hacks. I read 50 books a year to dive deeply into the business concepts that work. These will save you time and give you proven results. I will put these in your personal Google Folder. You will get a treasure chest of exactly what you need. (priceless) | The online community is there for you whenever you need it. ( $50/month x 3 = $150 value) | ||
| You will have a share of my mind. Every resource, every person I meet, every book, article, video, podcast I consume will be with you in mind. I will send you goodies, thoughts, ideas and resources as I come across them and I do! (priceless) | We have popup events as required. If you are stuck and a quick get together, possibly with a guest domain expert, will help, we will call a popup event. ($150 each x 1/month average = $450 value) | ||
PLUS You get personal support whenever you need it. Call on me at any time to help you. This will be great when you hit a snag, or you aren’t sure of the best way to move forward. This is where I shine. I bring experience in every industry, working with 1000s of business owners. I have helped someone through exactly what you are struggling with so I can share real-world stories and results. To be clear, I am the kind of person who is deep in the moment. That means I am not immediately available, but when you have me, you have all of me. (again, priceless)
For a total value of $4,500 + the priceless parts!
All for only $2500 per module/quarter
I designed this program using the latest techniques to give you the results you want. All the information you need is already out there but, as Derek Sivers says, “If knowledge were all we needed, we’d all be billionaires with perfect abs. ” This program is so much more than that.
BONUSES
I struggled with this part because I am giving you everything I have. I don’t want to hold back pieces just to have something for this section.
But then I thought about you and where you are right now.
I know you are strapped for time and you are wondering how you can fit more into your days.
You get a bonus time management course. We will get together live in late September. It will be discussion-based and personalized to the group. I have a 30 day course I sell for $100 and I will distill it into a single 90 minute online discussion.
I know you want to meet people face to face, too.
The technologies we are using are great for creating connection, but nothing beats face to face. I will be traveling this fall. If there are 5 of you in an area, I will come to you and we can get together. Toronto and Nova Scotia for sure. I am open to other areas, too.
Plus I would like to do 2 international travel retreats over the next year. These will be several days and allow us to delve and deepen our work. I am thinking Iceland and possibly Slovenia because I want to explore those places more. I will put together travel packages and you will pay only cost. I may invite other people and they will be paying a price to reflect the value of the material we will be covering.
Here’s why this program is different:
After 15 years of owning a bookkeeping business working closely with 100s of small business owners in every industry and through my association with other organizations I worked with 1000s more. I got to see what works and what doesn’t. I took what I learned and wrote the book Your Effortless Business.
The small business support industry is built on the MBA model of doing business where you focus on marketing, finance, operations and HR. It was designed in the early part of the last century as a way to divide up the management of big business into functional areas. It barely works for big business and it certainly doesn’t work for small business. Small business is not a little big business. What works, is focusing on people. Over the last 5 years I developed a methodology that makes sense for small business and that works. This is how we will design your business.
I believe that we make business way more complicated than it needs to be. We will be focused on finding the minimum amount of work to give the maximum amount of value. You will find that there are very specific things that your customers wants in order to feel their needs are fulfilled. The secret to an effortless business is to find what it takes and provide it. as efficiently and effectively as possible.
Other programs have a system they want you to plug and play so that you will get the same amazing results they got. BUT, you are not them. The system for you is unique to you. It is made of existing proven pieces, but it is put together in a way that plays to your strengths, abilities, talents, customers, team and circumstances. There is a path, an order to do the work and we will follow it. Along the way we will find the perfect pieces for you to use to make your system uniquely yours.
My super power is to understand the underlying reason for situations and to find the very best way forward. I have experience with 1000s of businesses in every industry. I can always find others who have dealt with exactly what you are going through and I can parse their experiences to find the nuggets that apply to you.
You get a mind-shifting experience to see your business in a whole new way.
You get a very clear picture of where you are going and the exact way to get there.
You get all the knowledge and resources you need to build your business as you need them, personalized to you and your business.
You get all the accountability, support, cheering, butt-kicking and hugs you need to keep you moving forward.
Only 12 spots available
| Registration for the first module ends September 30 or when we’re full. Only $2,500 | Or lock in your position for all 4 modules and save $2000 by paying in full in advance CDN $8000 | ||
|---|---|---|---|
Don’t delay, take action now!
FAQs
Who are you and what do you have to offer me?
My name is Frances Schagen and I owned Crystal Clear Bookkeeping for 15 years which gave me the privilege of diving deep into 100s of small businesses. I saw what worked and what didn’t. I studied the most successful and I took what I learned to write the book, Your Effortless Business.
I started the Business Owners Success Club over 15 years ago as a way to bring small business owners together to help each other grow our businesses. Over the years I have gathered information, resources and examples of all aspects of business in all industries. As technology grew, the BOSC changed and grew, too. We are now online.
Do you watch TED talks? If you see any dated July 2009, you may see me in the audience. I was at the first annual TED Global. That spurred me to organize 12 TEDxNovaScotia events. In 2012, I joined 750 other TEDx organizers from around the world along with the TED organization for a week long summit in Doha, Qatar.
Some of the businesses I have had are opening a coworking space in a small Town; architectural drafting; landscaping,; small holding farm and farmers market; author, speaker and workshop leader.
I presented training for the Acadia Entrepreneurship Centre in the program they developed for the Asia Pacific Economic Counsel. I presented training for the Canada Business Development Corporation and was a regular consultant and trainer for their clients. I partnered with many business support organizations in designing and delivering programming. I presented a day long workshop at the Northern Economic Practitioners Conference. I consult with social enterprise to help them structure their business to fit their missions. I founded and organized the annual Kings County Small Business Conference.
I uncovered a new way to run small business by observing the most successful small business owners. Most people don’t think about how to run their business and just follow the convention of the MBA model: focus on marketing, finance, operations and human resources. My operating system would have you focus on people and I have developed a whole methodology and wrote a manual about how to do that.
Have you owned a successful business in my industry?
Maybe, but in this case, that’s not the point.
By all means get a domain expert to help you if you need help with your retailing, service or particular industry.
I am a business model/strategy/process expert. My super power is bringing you stories and examples of people in other businesses, industries or even walks of life who have solved the problems you are facing. AND I can help you apply those lessons to your business.
I have worked with people in every stage of business, in every industry and in every stage of life. I have seen the implications of business decisions on life and the long-term health of business. I know what the outcome will be for every business permutation. I can make sure you get the outcome you want and no surprises.
My job is to show you your business from the outside and show you how it compares and contrasts with other businesses. I am the expert who has an overview of what business is and can be; and how you can make yours work better for you.
This program is priced considerably less than other ones with this much personal support and value
Yes it is. Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that means the value isn’t there. You are indeed getting insane value for the price. Other programs like this charge a minimum of $1000s a month and next time I will, too.
It is priced this way for several deliberate reasons:
I want to attract small business owners who don’t see the value in a $1000s a month program. I believe that if I can prove to you that this program is indeed worth $1000s a month, I will know I have done an amazing job. I need that feedback.
If I can design this in a way that pushes you to get results without the added prod of paying $1000s a month, then I know I have done a good job with compliance and encouragement. That’s part of the magic of expensive courses, the more people pay, the more invested they are in doing the work and the better the results everyone gets. Another challenge I am giving myself.
This is the first time I am running this course, which means I don’t have testimonials from people who have done this. You have to trust that I know what I am talking about (google me and you will see my body of work all over the internet). I have been hired by many business support organizations to deliver programing to their clients. I am trained in business workshop delivery and in small business counseling. Much of my reading and study is around what it takes to support small business owners in doing the work they know they need to do.
This is the first time I am running this program and I will be doing more than is necessary so that I can test and measure your results to see what is the most effective and efficient way to get you your results. We will be learning together as the year progresses. That means the last months will be considerably more valuable to you than the beginning months and I am not comfortable charging a premium price before I can prove that I can deliver the premium results.
This is your chance to get high-end support for a low price.
I have a business, how can I find the time to do this?
Your time is your most precious resource and the thing most business owners want more. This program will help make your business more profitable, but even more importantly, it will give you back your time. You decide at the outset how much time you want back and we make it happen. I have helped small business owners like you step away for hours every day, for days every week and for weeks and months every year. I have helped a couple of smart people step away completely.
As soon as you start, we will begin saving you time. That’s the whole point of this mastermind. Each process we automate saves you time. Each time you gain more clarity, you get more time.
I hear you. I began my bookkeeping business as a way to control my time as I had 4 kids and even home schooled them for a while. I learned how to be very good with my time. I have a list of 30 different ways you can get more time. I lead by example
Read or listen to the 4 Hour Work Week. Many of the items on my list came from that book.
Is this a course, consulting, coaching or counseling?
The short answer is YES.
It is whatever you need to facilitate you making progress. We are following a program and the knowledge exchange is done using the latest research in learning and adult education. You will get that knowledge in a number of formats and you get to choose which ones you prefer.
There will be times when I and others will take on consulting, coaching and counseling roles as you require them. We all need all those roles at times and in different areas of our business.
Couldn’t you teach me what I need to know in a workshop?
Other programs give you what you need so you can take their tools and information and build your business on your own. I have worked closely with enough small business owners to know that it isn’t information and more tools that you need. You need support and the answers to your questions as you encounter them.
What you need and how you hear it will change as you and your business grow. You know what it is like to read a book, watch a movie, listen to a podcast or watch a video a second time. You get different insights because you are at a different place. You don’t know all of what you will need until you need it and you want access to the resources you need when you need them.
Much of this work involves testing, measuring and getting feedback. That takes time. We aren’t just throwing things into place, we are using what you do now, and the data you have and will gather to build your business as we go. This isn’t cookie-cutter, but it is a proven program that will get you to your perfect business.
You’re busy. You are already running your business and it takes all your time – I know that because the work expands to fill the time available. Which means 2 things: we can find the time for you to do this and you need to do this in small enough chunks that you can fit it in around everything else. We will make continual, deliberate progress.
Do you remember what you were doing a year ago? The past year went by in the snap of a finger and the next will go by as fast. You get to decide how much you will accomplish in that year.
What if I am slower or faster than everyone else?
We are using a combination of shared work for those things that are common to all of your businesses and individual work with your google doc workbook and all of our other touch points. With this small group I can do that. We will progress as makes sense for the whole group. I am willing to support everyone to keep us more or less together. Everyone will move more quickly through some parts than others. This program is elastic enough to accommodate.
We will have popup events any time we need them to help smaller groups over any humps.
How can you help all of us individually?
I’m a bit of a statistics geek. I know that not all of you will need me all the time. This is a small enough group that with the natural ebb and flow of life and business, it will be fine. I live and breath this business stuff.
I love working with small groups. I love all I learn and I love sharing all I learn. Sharing it is one of the ways I process and learn new stuff. That’s why I am happy to give as much of my time as this group requires.
The next time I offer this program, I won’t be able to give this much personalized service. You lucky duck, you get in on it early.
Can you tell more about the Google Folder?
I got this idea from a good friend. He uses it to read what his clients are writing in the workbook he wrote for them. I saw that and decided I could take it even further. This technology means it’s easy for us to co-create an individual workbook for you.
It is very easy for us to set up a shared folder. If you want to keep some of it private you can pull it out of the folder. The more I know, the better I can help you. I will ask you to set up a folder and share it with me. That way you maintain ownership of it.
One of my business service hacks is around figuring out how to provide insane value easily. It’s easy for me to find you the perfect resources and I was already wondering how to make them available to you in the easiest way possible. This is it.
Over time, we will build a treasure trove of valuable tools and resources for you, forever.
Send me an email. Let’s talk.
Working with Frances not only changed my business, but changed my life. First, she helped me believe that anything was possible, then she helped me pinpoint what was most important so we could design the business and life that would get me there. She helped me make the necessary changes of selling one of my businesses, moving the other and streamlining it to work even better. Now I make a great living working from my strengths and I get to spend most of my days close to my horses. You can have the business and life you want and Frances can help you get it. Betty Ann Balcom – Betty Ann Design
Photo 1 by Daniela Cuevas on Unsplash
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Photo 3 by Erik Eastman on Unsplash
Photo 4 by Steven Lelham on Unsplash
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