119: CHISEL Breakdown: How to Keep it Simple Sister
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[00:00:00] Hey friends, welcome back to the Called to Lead podcast. So today's episode is going to be a continuation and a series where I am breaking down my plan and best advice. If you are trying to lead your direct sales or network marketing company or team to renewal. So if this is the first episode you've listened to, you might be like, wait, what, what is she talking about? Using all these languages, but essentially. I'll give you a little bit of the breakdown, but for those of you guys who know exactly what I'm talking about, I have been breaking down the chisel acronym, which I'll explain exactly what those letters mean here in just a second.
But today's episode is going to be specifically on the S. Which is simplicity. So I love this conversation and I'm going to be sharing with you guys three ways that you can simplify your business and your team. Right now this month, and I'm also going to be sharing what I've done or am doing in each of these areas, myself [00:01:00] to hopefully lead my Seint team back to renewal.
So let's dive into the episode. Here we go.
[00:02:00]
So the chisel acronym is something that author Brett Blake talks about in his book, renewal for field leaders, which is specifically applied towards network marketing companies, direct sales companies that are about five to seven years into their journey where they've been through the, ~uh, ~the launch phase, the hyper-growth phase where things feel like they're, it's going straight up and everybody's winning to the pro growth by promotion phase, which there's sometimes a little bit of growth, but most of the time. I'm pretty stabilization. Because the way that business kind of continues is by having promotions and incentives. Which then leads to frustration for people no longer having their business go straight up, which PS isn't sustainable, really with any business model. And that leads to what's called the shakeout, which is when certain sellers or leaders from within that company decide to leave, pursue other options. Or fear from like what might happen. Starts to [00:03:00] create that decline.
So the two choices from there are to continue going down, doing nothing, or to allow this opportunity to figure out what's working for your business. Make some changes, really spotlight on those who are still here and having results and doing all the things and then follow this chisel acronym. And that will lead to renewal in your business. And so that's my word of the year.
That's my goal, my singular goal for this year when it comes to my work is to laser focus in, on creating renewal in my business. And the chisel acronym is how I am doing that. So I've already shared the C, which is cash. And how to really use the money that you're making your business wisely. So that was the first episode, I think back in January, then in February, we talked about hope, which is the H and how to instill hope in yourself and where our hope also comes from because it's not in your company. Spoiler alert then the I is innovation.
And so that's what we [00:04:00] talked about in March. And that is really leveraging ways outside of new products that you can bring and spark innovation in your business. So that was the last episode that we did in this series. And then today's is going to be the S which again is simplicity. And then to follow next month, we in may, we will have the E, which is expansion. And then finally we'll wrap it up in June with the L, which is leadership. But let's dive into the S simplicity, which is the perfect podcast for me, because as I mentioned in our episode last week, My team name is team kiss, which stands for keep it simple sister. And the backstory behind that is my amazing leader, Tammy Williams.
She actually coined that team name and it was totally her team name. I don't remember if, I don't know if I had a team name. Did I have a team name before? I don't really remember, but at one point we decided, cause she made up like, I think 80% of my business at that point, we decided to kind of band together and we did a lot of the systems together, which was awesome because we sort of divided the load. And [00:05:00] I asked her if we could use her team name and she said, yes, and it's stuck.
And has honestly been like that little simple mantra has been such an inspiration to me in terms of keeping it simple in my business, in all of the things. So then when I read about this chapter in the renewal book, I was like, okay, this is speaking my language. And it is so important to continually refine the ways that you can simplify your personal business and the ways that you're leading your team.
So let's break down. The three ways that you can incorporate simplicity or the S into your business and exactly how I'm kind of doing it in mind. So the first one. Is what do you need to stop doing? What in your business are you doing too much of meaning? Are you trying to do all the things when it comes to getting new,~ uh,~ new customers in your business, are you doing 1,000,001 different. Like incentives or challenges or trainings or listening to [00:06:00] even too many podcasts.
Sometimes if you're listening to a million different mentors and different voices, it can be so noisy to know, like this person's telling me I need to grow my Instagram. And then here's Heather saying, I don't need to use social media. And then here's somebody else who's telling me to do this. And it can be really, really confusing.
So it's everything from what you're consuming to, what you are sharing with your team to where and how you're getting. Your customers or where you're putting your focus in your energy and your goals, what do you need to stop doing in your business? So Brett opens with this in the beginning of the. ~Um,~ his chapter on this, and he actually talks about apple as a great example of this.
And Steve jobs was honestly such a brilliant man when it came to this and that's, what's made apple so successful is think about it. It's really simple. When you look at apple, what they provide and even like the marketing side of it, everything is just really. ~Uh,~ simple. Now he says that's hard work and it is. But a big part of that is what do you need to stop [00:07:00] doing? Are you kind of like some right now, looking at getting distracted by the shiny object syndrome and trying to add another direct sales company into your foray.
Are you trying to sell too many different things? Are you trying to sell too many things within your own product line? Do you have a clear focus on where you need to, you know, really laser focus in on this is a question only you can answer, and that is what do you need to stop doing? So I thought about this prayed about this big time in the season, leading up, like I took all of December off to really quiet my mind through the advice of my mentors.
I did not listen to a single audio book. I did not listen to a single podcast. I only spent time in the word. And listen to the Lord and just prepared my heart for what he had for me in this next season. And I'm so glad that I took the time to do that. And the answer for me and what I needed to stop doing and simplify. I was, I needed to stop trying [00:08:00] to focus on additional monetization efforts outside of my company. Outside of Seint because in doing so, it was clouding my mind.
It was creating confusion for how and where to spend my time and energy. And essentially, I just put everything on the altar and I put everything on the line that I was doing, and I got really prayerful about what was most impactful for me to continue doing. And so I thought about a courses podcast and I'm like, okay, wait, do I still need to spend. However much time creating a podcast episode every single week.
If I'm not trying to monetize it in some way, through a course or through coaching or through, you know, ads or whatever, anything like that. And I felt in my spirit that the answer was yes, that by laser focusing in, on my Seint business. And by knowing that this can be a great way to not only serve. My Seint team, but also serve my bigger mission and vision, which is to uplift our entire company.
So if [00:09:00] you're in Seint but on my team, hopefully you can still benefit from this, but also the entire industry. So I have a lot of listeners who aren't even insane, and I love that so much. And I hope that me sharing my story and my journey can help serve you and your business. But it didn't mean that I needed to stop doing the podcast.
And honestly, I feel like I've never had more of a flood of inspiration in even drilling down the clarity on what it is that I'm talking about on this podcast. So for me, what I needed to stop doing was stop trying to spread my eggs in multiple baskets. Laser focus in on what was working for me, which is this amazing, beautiful business model that I have built with Seint.
And so that's what I'm going to stop doing is stop just being distracted by the shiny objects, by the good things that could be, and really focus on where I've been called to be right now in this season. Which is of course as a Seint leader. So what do you need to stop doing? That's question number one on how you can simplify. So the number [00:10:00] two way that you can simplify is using what Brett Blake calls, the three CS. So those are calendar. Cadence and communication. And so. A calendar and we teach us in the replicate your results program that we've done, which heads up.
I know I've kind of sent this on a couple of episodes. I will be letting go my Kajabi account in probably the end of it's either the end of may or June, probably the end of June. And so I will be sending out an email here shortly in the next, hopefully week. That,~ um,~ allows anybody who's on the waiting list for replicated results, to be able to go ahead and consume that, that course on there for free, which is exciting. So, ~um, ~again, Not expecting to be monetized, but I obviously want people to be able to benefit from it.
Especially if you have already either invested in the course or you already had,~ um,~ you know, Maybe you're on my team or in Seint. And you got it for free and you haven't had a chance to finish it yet. So stay tuned. ~Um,~ for an email for me on that, you can also go to,~ uh, ~[00:11:00] replicate your results.com if you want to hop on that waiting list.
Because when we send the email, it will be to anybody that's on that list. ~Um, ~and again, it will be totally free, but in that course, we talk about the importance of having a calendar and starting from your corporate calendar. So you might be kind of new in your business and you might not even know the different, you know, cadence of things that come around on your, your corporate calendar.
So you can either ask or upline, but if you've been around for a minute, for example, in Seint we know that every January we have an artist birthday party where we have an artist incentive. We know that every July we have a customer appreciation party. That is online and usually customer center though. Sometimes they will throw in like an additional artists incentive. Then, of course we have black Friday in November.
We have boxing day, which is a Canadian kind of version of black Friday in December. And then we sprinkle things throughout the year. Like obviously our reunion, which is our, ~um,~ 18 months, every 18 months conference or the virtual version in between, we have our reward [00:12:00] trips. We have, like, for example, mother's day, we just had an amazing mother's day promotion.
And so we have a calendar that,~ uh,~ is, is pretty expectable. ~Uh, ~expectable. Is that a word? Is that a word? It should be anyway. It's pretty. You can know what to expect. But then also for you as a team leader, you can create a calendar. And that's what Sarah Davies, my Seint. Mama and mentor. And I did roughly, as we took a calendar and kind of added in the corporate things, but then we mapped out what it is that how we want to be able to serve our leaders in our teams moving forward. For this year so that our leaders could then take and plan their own calendar.
So it starts with you and really just getting clear. And each, when you're creating this calendar, you need to have a cadence, which that's the second C, which is like a flow to where you don't want to have, like back to back to back to back incentives or pushes or focusing on the same things over and over again.
Or you don't want to not leverage something [00:13:00] that your corporate is doing. By doing your own version of it, or same thing with your upline. It doesn't mean you have to do everything that your upline is doing, but if they're already doing an amazing training or incentive, you shouldn't go reinvent the wheel and do your own version of it.
Just leverage the heck out of theirs. It'll, it'll be so much easier for you if you do. But having a cadence and a rhythm in your calendar is super important. And so with that in mind, the calendar and the cadence, what you can do, and this is what I do each month is you can have basically one game or one goal, if you will, that you're playing for your personal business or the me side of your business, which is the,~ um,~ you know, essentially your, what you want to do personally.
So if that's going for. One of our new Seint rewards or maybe you're going for an incentive trip. Maybe you're going for a personal sales record. Maybe you want to enroll. You know, two or five distributors on your team this month. Whatever that looks like for you. If you're trying to do all the [00:14:00] things. ~Um, ~maybe it's learning Instagram reels.
Maybe it's starting a YouTube channel. If you're trying to do everything all in one season, that is a recipe for burnout and you're going to get overwhelmed and likely you're not going to do much of anything. So focus on one thing that you can do for yourself each month. And you can map that out. Because my girl Jerica, Morton said that you'll hear in next week's episode, she says that if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. And so if you want to plan as far out in advance, what you want those things to be. Based off of the calendar of the month of, you know, from your corporate team, you're, you're applying all of those things. Having one solid goal in that month for you or one solid game that you're playing in that month is smart.
And then likewise have one. Focus for your team. So that's where like for one month it might be a challenge. The next month it might be leveraging your upline's, you know, leader, wham or leader call or something like that. So really just [00:15:00] having one clear, simple thing in one month. That year is your laser focus goal for your team and for your personal we'll help to create that cadence within your calendar. And then the last C is communication.
So communication can be really hard when you're trying to balance, like, how do you communicate with your entire team? How do you communicate and how often with your 20 percenters are your joggers or runners? How do you communicate with your two to five percenters? The ones that are your top, your top people, your partners, if you will.
And so my advice with this, and this is what I do is you want to create a community for your walkers, for everyone. Where you let them kind of share their questions, you know, for us, it's their color matches. It's, that's where you can shout out ranks and wins. And when you spot somebody doing something good and it's essentially a place where all are welcome. Where you're not sharing too crazy high level things there you're forwarding along, you know, certain things like, [00:16:00] for example, our, my community is on telegram.
It is for my directs. ~Um, ~because most of my leaders have their own team communities, if you will, for their walkers. But I love telegram because if something from corporate or something from my upline leaders comes through, I can just hit the forward button or even like my podcast. I put my podcast in the call to lead community, which is also in telegram, which you can join by texting the word podcast to my business cell, which is 9 1 2 4 0 5 8 9 1 2.
And you'll get a direct link to that if you want. But I can share my podcast. Cast in that community. And honestly, not every episode is necessarily one that I would want to share for the entire,~ uh,~ my entire community, because that community for your walkers, you don't want to overwhelm them. You don't want to firehose them.
You don't want to overshare and you don't want it to be too big either. You want it to be something where people can connect with other people. They can feel like they're a part of something and they can kind of stay close to the fire. Then [00:17:00] you want to do what we call grandma chats with your joggers and runners.
So what that looks like is creating a chat again, telegram is where it's at. For me with the gals who are doing big things, maybe they are going for a rank or a goal or a trip or something like that. And putting them in a chat with your upline, or if it's, if it's someone that you've tapped rooted or kind of are connecting down within your team, you can include their upline or uplines.
And this is a great place to. You know, kind of continually check in, shout out. You can again, share higher level things that you think are specific to, to this group. ~Um,~ and then even better, if you can put them all together. In a short term and I would do the short-term not, long-term like a six to eight week wham as Bob Heilig calls it a weekly accountability mastermind. Where you are essentially putting all of those runners together in a group where you can meet. ~Uh, ~meet monthly. ~Um, ~or weekly, I'm sorry, weekly for about a six to eight week period. [00:18:00]
And that is a great way where you can share wins, roadblocks challenges, short training, and stay connected and connect together those, those joggers and runners. And so that could even be on zoom. You could still have a group on telegram. That's what I do. And then finally your partners. So you want to stay in pretty constant communication.
It doesn't have to be daily, but certainly every week with your five strongest leader legs. You want to just cheer them on? You want to encourage them? If you want, you can do, like, I do have a leader mastermind with the gals that kind of fit that, that, and then they're next to my top direct leaders and then their direct leaders,~ um, ~that have reached like the top 2% of the company.
~Um,~ I do have a little leader mastermind where I, I will connect them together in that. And so that way again, they've got a higher level of different, you know, completely different set of challenges because most of them have like, Hundreds of, of Timmy's as opposed to like, they're not necessarily trying to build.
I [00:19:00] mean, they're always trying to build a personal business, but they're, they're navigating more of the leadership things. And so having those like three separate areas, For your team, it allows you to set boundaries for yourself and it allows you to create a clear and concise place to communicate with the people that matter the most.
Okay. Now I mentioned boundaries. I pretty much keep all of my business conversations on telegram for my team, my team conversations on telegram. And I keep all of my customer conversations on project broadcast. So that way I'm not necessarily getting like color matches or random texts on my personal phone, I can check in. Like a couple of times a day on my project broadcasts.
I also,~ um, ~full disclosure have, ~um,~ a little bit of help with that because it's not my favorite part of the business is like the, the, the communication side of it. So, ~um, ~I do outsource a little bit of that with my customer service. Because it is just, it's a better way to make sure they're being well cared for.
And then they [00:20:00] are amazing at letting me know, like when I need to step in. And I do. And I step in, of course, when I can, that allows me to set boundaries in my business, to where I am working in my business, like a business. Right. And having like a big girl phone number. And so for me, telegram and project broadcast is the clear place for communication.
And then again, the rhythm, as I mentioned, just kind of depends on the month. So that is. The number two way that you can simplify, which are the three CS calendar, cadence and communication. And then finally the last step to simplify comes down to your systems. So I believe that grep light talks about this more in the innovations category, but it's so funny for a long time.
I think even on the interview with him, I was like the S stands for systems. Right. But it actually does it. And he doesn't talk about systems in this particular chapter. But I, when I think of, ~uh,~ simplicity, I think of systems and making sure that your systems for yourself personally, and for your team, Our simple.
So your [00:21:00] number three.~ Uh,~ tip is to do a systems audit. So essentially what I want you to think about. There are five different areas of systems that you need to have in your business, especially if you are a leader. For, if you aspire to leadership, which that's the purpose of this podcast. So hopefully. You, ~uh,~ that is you.~ Um, ~but the five systems that you need in your business are prospecting, meaning. Filling your funnel or like sifting through all the followers, all your connections, all the people to find customers and business partners. Onboarding, which is essentially helping both your customers and your new business partners get started in a way that's simple and consistent and like the same thing over and over again.
And then number three communications. So that is one of the systems. And we just want to roll that. And that's it for your customers and for your team. And then retention. So this is like picture your funnel. It's got holes. There is leaking and the bucket at the bottom is leaking. So you have to [00:22:00] plug up those holes.
So you want to keep filling the bucket, fill in the funnel, fill in the bucket, but you also want to plug it. And the way that you can do that is by really for your customers offering amazing customer service. And consistent communication to where if they're not like for me, I'm not consistent on social media. So, but I am very consistent in communication with all of my customers or my potential customers.
Who've been color matched, things like that. And so communication and my customer service allows my retention to stay really, really strong because people they're staying close to the fire, same thing with, with your team recognition is a great way. Just helping people feel seen and heard and shouted out and creating a fun community.
This can create retention. And then finally, leadership development is the fifth system where you want to build up, not just yourself as a leader, but more importantly, look to build up additional new leaders all the time in your business, even. If you don't have any leaders yet start now. So the question is that I want you to ask here is [00:23:00] can anyone and I mean, anyone do what you're doing in your business when it comes to those five areas. So specific to the way that you find your customers.
Can you teach anybody to do whatever it is that you're doing, or if you don't necessarily have the time or capacity or energy to teach them, is there something, a resource that you can point to? So for example, you know, can you teach somebody how to create reels and build a following on Instagram? Yeah, you probably could.
Can you teach somebody how to do in-person classes? Yeah, you can sit in my podcast about it. I can link to it here with my top 10 tips for in-person stuff. ~Um, ~You know, can you do. You know, networking and, and cold market stuff, which is not really my favorite thing. Like it is the way that you're building your business.
Something that you could show someone else how to do. And that is how you can kind of really do an audit and drill down on what that looks like to bring on customers to bring on distributors because [00:24:00] here's one pro tip. You might have a big following and you may have people that come to you. Like the attraction marketing thing, but is that something that you can really show somebody else how to do?
Like, just to say like, okay, sit back and relax. And people are just going to come to, you know, it doesn't happen for 98, maybe percent, maybe more of people. They aren't just going to come to you. So are you duplicating talking about specifically. Your, you know, your product, but also the business side, as much as you can.
And as often as you can with individual people, because that is something you can show somebody else how to do, because guess what, you did it for them. And they saw you do it. They saw the language you used, and if they join it, worked for them. So it could also work for them. Does that make sense? So can anyone do what you're doing when it comes to prospecting? Same thing.
Can anyone do what you do when it comes to onboarding both your customers and your new artists? So we talked about this a little bit last week in that [00:25:00] episode where sometimes you may have something that's a little bit more of a complicated, like I've heard of people building their own apps for, you know, for onboarding. Well, as long as you're sharing that with your team or, you know, whatever system you're using is something you can clearly show them how to use too, that could work.
But if you're the only one that is benefiting from that, maybe it is something that you're paying for and you can't clearly show someone else how to do it really simply. I would go back to the one with what do you need to stop doing? Right? Because if you're paying a lot of money for it, What if you chose to invest in something that is simple and is duplicatable. And save yourself some money in the process, even if you have to learn it on the front end.
Okay. So are your onboarding systems simple enough to where anybody could do it? Same thing, communication. You might choose, like, I know some people choose to do it on their communication on messenger or Marco polo or Voxer. ~Um, ~you know, or they just constantly communicate like, you know, [00:26:00] Shared, literally everything like immediately at the drop of the hat. Well, can you show somebody else how to do that to be available?
You may be available full time all the time to be able to do those things, or can you point people to where to go, to find that information and train them on doing it so that you're not the one that's constantly having to keep. You know, the one that sharing the things. And so, you know, you, if you do choose to use a different communication platform, then your company, or then your upline are you complicating it, which is obviously the opposite of simplicity by not doing it in a way that they would also want to do it.
So that's communications. Then retention. Is the way that you are creating retention, something that you can show somebody else how to do. That's a good question. Just ask yourself that. And then lastly, the leadership development one, this is where I see a ton of leaders. Try to really, almost kind of over provide [00:27:00] at the leadership department where they make all the decisions themselves.
They're the ones who are. Doing all the things they're having the weekly calls and they're coming up with all these trainings and they're spending all their time. And they're like doing the challenges every month. And not only is it probably exhausting for you as a leader, but guess what happens? The people who could be leaders on your team. Are watching you saying, I don't want to do what she's doing.
I didn't sign up for this to be a full-time job, right? Like that doesn't look very fun. I don't know that I could do what it is she's doing. So when it comes to leadership development, are you dividing and working with your partners? So, like I mentioned earlier, having, you know, being in touch with your partners, your five strongest, like leader legs. Invite them into the fold.
Like when I,~ um, ~Really kind of had actually, I mentioned like Tammy was 80% of my business at one point. Well now she's probably like more like 40% of my business, which is still a huge amount. But the way that I grew, those additional legs was I invited leaders outside of Tammy's leg. [00:28:00] And Tammy and her, her biggest leader into what we call the lab, the leadership advisory board. And I didn't define leaders by rank.
I defined what it was that they had to contribute in terms of their. You know, just their wisdom, their, ~um, ~their hard work ethic. And it was really beautiful because together we created and refined our systems at the time. And it was something that none of it fell on the shoulders of one person. And because I was including my leaders in those decisions and they were a part of the creation. They were way more invested.
They didn't feel like they had to go do their own thing. And they felt like they were a part of something bigger, as opposed to just trying to emulate what I was doing before, which was just standing up and talking every single week, which I'm like, wait, is that what I'm doing right now? So, no, I'm just getting a. I do basically have that leadership advisory board right now.
And we do, we do these things now. So I have learned my lessons and hopefully that you can too. So if you're not seeing leaders rise up and only honestly about one in 10 are going to do it. So if you [00:29:00] don't even have 10 teams, yet you might not have the person on your team who even desires to do that.
But if you've got 10 or more, I guarantee you there's somebody on your team who wants to do it. And wants to grow. And if you've got a hundred or more, there's 10 ladies that want to rise up into this, but how appealing are you making it look and how simple are you keeping it to? Where they can do it too. So that's my third and final tip is for you to do a systems audit for the ways that you run your personal business and the way that you run your team, just to make sure that number one, anybody can do it.
And number two, that it's as simple as it possibly can be. And if it's not, then go back to number one, which is what do you maybe need to stop doing? So I hope that this episode was really helpful for you in terms of getting a clear vision of how simplicity can be a huge factor and creating renewal in your business.
And so stay tuned and don't forget to subscribe and share if this has been helpful for you and stay tuned for an awesome. ~Uh,~ episode [00:30:00] next week. Bye guys.
