There's always a process, whether it's simple or whether it's really complicated. We have a process to everything we do. That's what we're taking a look at today. Come on in.

It's time for the becoming a profitable CEO podcast, and it's all about providing you with the tools to succeed on this ever-evolving business-building journey. My mission is to make sure, you know, you are not alone, that it is possible and that you yes, you can do this.

You matter. The world is a better place for having you in it and your voice is needed. I'm Teresa Cleveland, and I believe that we can all make a difference and that having a successful online business is one of the best ways to do that. Let's get to it.

Hey, hey, hey, it is week 25 of 2021 and welcome to the podcast. I'm Teresa Cleveland, your host here at Becoming a Profitable CEO.

And just a quick reminder, next week is the middle of the year. It's week 26. And I hope that you're doing everything that you need to do to finish this first half of the year strong. You've still got time. You can make those phone calls, reach out to those clients or prospects that are on your list that haven't yet either renewed or secured their spot on your schedule. There is time to still meet your goals.

So let's talk processes.

We have them in everything that we do, even when we think that we're scattered and all over the place. And if that's our norm, there's a process in there, too. Like going to bed at night. You know, people have a process to that. And maybe you're one of those people that takes your shower, brushes your teeth, puts on the lotion and everything else that goes on in your nighttime ritual or your nighttime going to bed process.

Or you could want to be one of those people who think, oh, I don't really have a process. I go to bed whenever. And guess what? That's a process, too. That's your process. You go and you do. And then you go to bed whenever.

Or you might think, you know, I don't have a process at the beginning of the day to start my day. It would be so great if I have a process. Well surprise, or not, that's a process, too.

We can change our processes. Sometimes it's just realizing what they are and figuring out, OK, is this the way that I want it to be? And thankfully, if it's not, then we get to change that. And there are plenty of resources to help change whatever that process is.

And I know a lot of times we may think of them as habits, but let's think about that. Like that person who just like falls into bed whenever. Typically that's the last step of the process. Right? They've gotten up early. They've done whatever they've done throughout the day. They've worked themselves all through the day, stop to take care of the things that need to be taken care of, get back to work and then stumble into bed or the couch or wherever, and just pass out because they're exhausted. Right? And then wake up tomorrow to do it all over again.

And yes, over time then, as we continue to do that, we look at the habits. But again, thankfully, we get to look at what is working for us and what isn't, and we get to change those things.

This topic and episode came up courtesy of a conversation I was having with a client the other day. We were catching up on a few things and I was sharing about the bale gardening we've been doing, the straw bale gardening. And as we were chatting about it, at about the same time, we both were like, that's a podcast episode!

So today I'm reporting back on the straw bale gardening and oh my goodness! What an adventure!

All right, just to catch everybody up, if you haven't listened to episode 36 yet, let me share a couple of things.

First, I want to say that I see so many similarities between gardening and life and definitely in business. I'm sharing another of those observations today.

And just to make sure we're all on the same page, I became enamored with straw bale gardening this year. I've been wanting to do it for a while and this year was the year. And more to the point, I think I was enamored with the "idea" of straw bale gardening at first. Full disclosure, I did not do my due diligence before I started and I ended up with additional tasks and expenses, as we all know happens in those situations when we haven't thoroughly researched something.

So here you go. I started the whole process and yes, dear God, it's definitely been a process, going on three weeks ago. That's 21 days and over half of that time was spent conditioning the bales - which I had not prepared for - getting them conditioned for optimal results.

I've had to build extra time into my day, EVERY day to get that conditioning done. During that time, I monitored the bales and I was able to slowly see some slight changes in the bales as they began composting inside. And after I started, I did do some research and so I knew that the color changing a bit was a good sign. And oh my goodness, yes, the smell! Whew!! I'm told that's a sign that I'm on the right track, but oh my. Fortunately, it didn't last long.

That whole conditioning stage was unexpected because like I said, I hadn't done the research. So during that time that I couldn't plant and I was conditioning them, I did research a variety of things like what grows best together, how many plants per bail, etc. and this is all in addition to my raised bed gardens that I have.

So after I looked into what kind of things to grow together and how many plants for all of that, then I drew out a grid so I could plot out what I was going to plant this year and where. And then I put a few things on next year's wish list.

So once I reached the point that they were conditioned and ready to plant, we planted acorn squash, zucchini, summer squash, beans, carrots, green beans, eggplant and strawberries. And just today, with the help of my recruit, my eight year old son, Liam, we planted potatoes. And as Liam says to me, "Mom, I love farming!" And as you can imagine, we're excited for the harvest. That time when all of these efforts pay off. But it's the journey from here to there, right?

Right now we're in that period where we'll start seeing some signs of growth with quite a few things. But it's going to be quite a while before we see anything of the potatoes, they're buried really deep down in the bales. And other things as well, because, you know, things take time. So even though we're going to see the signs of growth, it's going to be quite a while before we see the actual harvest and reap the benefits of our efforts.

And even so, we still have to put in the effort every day. We have to schedule time to water as needed, check for weeds and pests, prune as needed, things like that. This isn't my first garden, so I know it can get tedious AF sometimes. But look, we have to do it anyway. Like it or not. If we're going to put in the time and effort, we want to make sure that we get the best result. Right?

So there have already been some casualties. We've lost three summer squash for no apparent reason. We have one left, though. That's doing great. It's like there's no rhyme or reason. And of course, we're recording all this info in our Garden Journal. And I'm sure you're not surprised about that, right? We want to remember what worked, what didn't, because by the time next year gets here, you know, you look back and your memory isn't as sharp and you're just like, did that work? Why didn't it work? So we're recording all this stuff.

We want to know what worked, what didn't work, so we can do obviously more of what did work and eliminate what didn't. And of course, that leaves more room for experiments with things from our wish list. And we had to do the wish list because we couldn't do it all. There just wasn't enough room. There's just not enough time to get it all in.

So in the case of our dearly departed squash, we need to decide in the next day or so if we want to take a chance on replacing them with new plants or something new entirely. We definitely want to get the best use of the space that we have and not miss our window of planting opportunity. So in order to take advantage of that, we're going to decide later this afternoon.

Here's the thing. Like I said earlier, there's a process to everything. And with all of the time and money that I've committed to this, I want to make sure that I get the best results.

I hate to say that I couldn't have because I could. There's always a choice. I could have skipped the conditioning altogether. But I've read too many stories about the kind of crappy results that most people get when they skipped it. And I could have taken my chances and planted whatever I wanted, wherever I wanted, and maybe it would work out OK. Maybe it wouldn't. Time would definitely tell. But again, we have this window of opportunity. We have a planting season and gardening season.

Other than dropping the ball and doing my initial due diligence of what this endeavor would entail, I've implemented the rest of the process based on prior trial and error experience, some of mine and some of the experts. Right? And I'm doing what I'm doing because I know it works.

And when it comes to processes, I've also used the example in the past of baking a cake. We don't grab the box of mix, add the eggs, bake it, take it out, then add the water. Right? Because that's just not how it's done. Can you even imagine the results of that?

So I often wonder why we expect that approach to work in our business.

(See what I did there? It may take time sometimes, but I always come back to making the connection. 🙂 )

So let's take content, for instance. Now, this is one of the most crucial assets of our business. It's not just a byproduct or an afterthought. Content is the lifeblood of our business, right? It's how we connect and communicate with our audience.

It's also an area where I hear a lot of grumbling and frustration. Things like:

• I don't know what to write or create.
• I post and I post on social, but no one's responding.
• I can't be everywhere.
• I feel like I've tried all the things and nothing's working.

And it goes on and on, right?

But guess what?

When we dig a little bit deeper, time after time, we find that some part of the process has been overlooked. So many times we're so eager to get our thing out there, our course, our program, our services, whatever it is that we're offering.

And side note you for having the chutzpah to even get it out there, by the way.

But we're so eager to get it out there and reap the harvest of the work that we've put into creating it, because we know it's going to help people.

And sometimes in that rush to get it out there or simply because we didn't know the whole process, we skip over some steps. It's not even intentional. Most of us coming into the online space don't have a business background. We're just good at the thing we do. So we don't know what we don't know, right?

So maybe we didn't condition our content for optimal results by doing our research right. Really rolling up our sleeves and getting to know our audience up close and personal.

Maybe we didn't purposefully plan and plot out the type of content that would best grow our audience and raise our visibility.

Or we were so busy putting out the content that we didn't monitor it to find out if it was progressing the way that we expected.

We didn't take the time to weed out the things that weren't working and fertilize the things that were.

And, you know, if we're not recording and tracking what's happening so that we can see that, to see what's working and what's not, we're not able to make the educated decisions that we could if we were monitoring that. And that would enable us to get the best return on our efforts, you know, taking advantage of those windows of opportunity as well.

Or maybe we didn't learn how to get the most mileage out of what we're creating.

And generally, we just don't understand the way that all of the steps fit together.

It's our content ecosystem.

Guess what?

You are not alone!

I've been there and so have many, many others. There's no shame or blame. We just don't know what we don't know - until we do!

Thank goodness, this is something that we can learn and put into practice.

And that's why I put together a live three-day workshop, Creating Consistent Content. That pretty much says it all, right?

It's coming up right after the Fourth of July. July 6th, 7th, and 8th, to be exact.

Some of the things that we're going to cover are understanding your content ecosystem and setting it up in a way that fits you and your audience. You want to be able to use content in a way that makes sense for your business, right? Your audience, your personality.

You'll be able to drop those annoying, unrelated social media captions and prompts and trying to trick the algorithms.

When we figure these things out, content creation becomes so much more fun, a lot less work. And you're not going to have to try to be everywhere.

The system and process that you're going to be creating for your business allows you to plan your content ahead of time. So you're never sitting there on Sunday night thinking, oh, my goodness, what do I have to post tomorrow? And, you know, it just kind of goes blank from there. It's like looking at that blinking cursor, right?

We're going to talk about different options that you have for organizing your content and ideas, because that's something I definitely hear a lot about. Like, "I don't know, it's everywhere. It's on my Google Drive, it's on my phone, it's in Dropbox." And even those people who keep it all in one place, on one platform where they're storing their information, they still say it's not easy to find or to be able to reference in any meaningful way. And I say different options because I don't believe in cookie cutters. Not everything works as effectively for one person as it does for another.

We're going to talk about some of the quickest, easiest and most effective ways to get your content out there and how to reuse and repurpose your content. Because let's face it, we spend a lot of time creating this stuff. Right? We might as well get the most mileage out of it as we can. And just think about the extra time you're going to save because you are doing these things ahead of time. You're repurposing it. So that's going to give you even more time to get out there and bring in more business.

I've priced it ridiculously low this time around. Believe it or not, it's only $249. I'm a bottom-line type of girl, so don't worry, I'm not going to blind you with a lot of hype and made up dollar values or a false sense of urgency. And guess what? There are no bonuses or suite of bonuses to tantalize you to sign up.

Bottom line for me is that I'm eager to help you begin creating consistent content so that you have more ease in your life and business. I want to support female online business owners in making a greater impact. And I know that understanding your content ecosystem and creating it to fit you and your audience is one of the most powerful things you can do. You can check it out and get all the details at ThePurposefulCEO.com/contentecosystem. I'll drop that in the show notes.

So if you're ready to learn the process, how to condition your content for optimal results, purposefully plan out the type of content that would best grow your audience and raise your visibility track and monitor your efforts so you can make educated decisions about your next best steps, how to store your content and ways to repurpose it, you're going to want to join me on July 6th, 7th and 8th. Again, you can check out all the details at ThePurposefulCEO.com/contentecosystem. I hope to see you there.

That's it for today. And until next time, let's go make a difference.

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Becoming a Profitable CEO. I'll be back next week. But in the meantime, let's continue the conversation head on over to our Facebook group at ThePurposefulCEO.com/Facebook, and share your take on today's episode.