In This Episode:

* How Sophy Dale ended up running 3 separate businesses—and what made her realize it was all too complicated* How Brigitte Lyons realized that her PR agency was letting scope creep make it feel like she was still throwing spaghetti at a wall* What both Sophy & Brigitte did to approach simplifying their businesses* And the personal reasons why simplifying was the ticket to creating businesses that worked both for their bank accounts and for their lives

What I wish every small business owner knew about making more more money is…

…it doesn’t have to be so complicated.

I mean that literally.

Creating a more complicated business doesn’t guarantee you a bigger paycheck, a bigger audience, or a bigger impact in the world.

Adding more and more moving parts to how your business runs doesn’t get you more happy customers or more personal satisfaction, either.

Of course, this doesn’t put a stop to the anxiety of feeling like, if only you could do more, things would be better.

I am certainly not immune from overcomplicating things and feeling despair that there aren’t more hours in the day.

I’ve created intricate marketing plans, business models, and schedules all with the hope that I could pass a threshold of doing enough to make it big.

But looking back over the last 12 years…

I can easily see that my greatest successes have come from keeping it simple.

So what does this mean for you?

Whether you want to make more money or you’re looking to make a bigger impact or you’re looking for more time, we’ve got to get down to the fundamental challenges that exist in your business.

What I mean by that is that “not making more money” isn’t actually a problem to solve. It’s a symptom, an indicator that there’s something else going on.

Making more money is the result of solving a more specific problem or set of challenges.

It might be a positioning problem. Or a pricing problem. It could be a customer challenge or a capacity issue. It might be a marketing problem—although, I wouldn’t bet on it.

It might be a business model challenge or an operational issue.

Or, it could be any combination of those things.

By addressing those root challenges, we can create simple, sustainable businesses that make a lot more money.

Or we can build simple, sustainable businesses that afford us more time, flexibility, or a greater impact in our communities.

Today, we’re kicking off both a series on simplifying and a set of two episodes with businesses owners who have direct experience with dramatically simplifying their businesses—and in turn, creating immense growth.

Brigitte Lyons is the founder of Podcast Ally, a PR agency specializing in getting experts and idea people booked on podcasts.

Sophy Dale is a copywriting mentor, messaging coach, and brand storyteller who helps coaches, designers, and course-creators write compelling copy.

Both Brigitte and Sophy know what it’s like to run complicated, bloated businesses.