7 ways to create more freedom in your business in 2024

7 ways that you can create freedom inside your business

 

Regardless of what your flavour of freedom is, you can create it! So for me, my flavour of freedom is being able to do what I want when I want in my business.
If I open my calendar for the day and I have an empty calendar, I am so incredibly happy. That for me is freedom. And it's also the freedom to be able to go and spend a month working overseas or travelling or doing all of the fun things, having time to go out and learn new hobbies. So last year in 2023, I started doing Pilates teacher training. I took up pottery. I took up pickleball. I love just doing random hobbies.

So creating a little bit more freedom can be whatever you want it to be. I know there's a huge narrative online of, Oh, it's got to be that you have the laptop lifestyle and you can travel everywhere and work from cafes around the world.
But for you, that might not be your flavour of freedom. For you, your type of freedom might be working three hours a day and then being able to completely mentally log off. And physically log-off, of course, but completely shut the laptop lid and not have to worry about your business and not have to think about your business when you are living your life outside of your business, when you are with your kids or when you are hanging out with your friends or doing whatever you do for fun.

So freedom can look like whatever you want it to look like.

And the very first step is to get really clear on that long-term vision. But I'm going to share seven actual practical things that you can start to do in your business now to create a little bit more freedom.

 

Take a bird's eye view of your business and audit every part.

The goal of this is to identify what's not working so that you can fix it before you begin to grow your business even more.
Because small stones in your shoe can become really big blisters, really painful blisters when you walk on them for long enough. So something that might just be a little niggle when your business is small, as you grow, it's going to get more and more painful because you're scaling your problems as well.
So you want to identify what's not working and what needs fixing, but you also want to identify what is working so you can double down on that and grow a whole lot faster. And when I say audit every area of your business, I mean, every area of your business. So your offers, starting with that. For example, are the offers that you sell aligned with what you want in your business?
If you want to take a month off three times a year, you can't do that if you have client deliverables, you need to meet each month. Do you enjoy delivering all of these different offers that you are delivering? Or are there some that you are selling where you think, Actually, every time I sell that, I don't like it because now I have to go and deliver that.
So do you enjoy delivering the offers you sell and do you currently have the right business model to get you to your long term goal, your long term vision for freedom? The next area to look at is your sales and marketing. So some things you might audit here is, is your current marketing going to get you in front of the right people?
Is that getting you in front of the right people and are there specific things that are working, things that aren't working? And are your sales processes converting these right people into paying clients? You also want to audit your finances. So are your income streams consistent and diversified, or are you relying on one income stream and some months it's great and other months there is nothing?
Where is your money going? Where are you spending your money? Do you need all of these expenses and all of the subscriptions and things that you're paying for? Do you have a good cash flow management process or could this be a little bit more effective? ─ How well are you using your finances to make decisions in your business?
Are you making decisions based on the gut feeling of, Oh, I can afford this or not? Or are you making them based on an actual spreadsheet where you can see, Oh yeah, if I buy that this month, then I'm going to have this much cash and yes, it's going to work or no, we can't afford it. You also want to audit your operations and yourself.
Where is your time going? Are your systems and processes working effectively? What needs to change? Could you automate some tasks, delegate them? Could you delete them? This whole process of auditing your business is so challenging because it requires getting honest with yourself and it requires facing the things that you would rather avoid in your business, the uncomfortable things.
But it's crucial because for something to change, something needs to change and you need to know what you are working with before you start making those changes. And that's why in my six month program, Freedom Fast Track, the very first step is to complete the business audit workbook. And that covers all of these areas.
And then spits out your priority list for the things that you need to action to start making those big shifts in your business. Big shifts for a business that creates freedom. A business that's profitable when you are not at your desk.

 

Get clear on that longterm business vision.

Get clear on your medium term goals, get clear on your business model and the action plan that is going to get you there.
So you need to have 100 per cent clarity on what kind of business you want to build so that you can start to take that intentionally aligned action now to create that one year goal, that five year vision, that 10 year vision. Otherwise you're just aimlessly throwing paint at a canvas and it's probably not going to look like what you want it to look.
And you're going to end up exhausted, overwhelmed, demotivated because you're just constantly doing, doing, doing, but with no real direction and you feel like you're not moving forward. Once you know what you are building, then you need to refine that business model to fit that vision. The business model that is going to be aligned with what's going to get you to those goals.
And then you need to build out an action plan. Because what got you here isn't going to get you there. It's not a matter of doing more of what already got you to here. And if you are already feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, how on earth do you think you're going to manage more of what you already have in your business?
You can't. Something needs to change. The other thing I want to say is if you try to scale without the right business model or without the right systems or structure, it's going to scale your stress or overwhelm. So you need to have all of these things in place first, and there is no one size fits all business model that I'm going to say, Oh, you have to have that.
You don't have to have an online course. You don't have to have a program. You don't have to have a membership. It depends on your vision for your business lifestyle freedom. There's no one size fits all. And unless you are copying and pasting somebody else's vision, then you can't copy and paste their business model.
You need to uncover what that's going to look like for you.

 

Build out a messaging and content playbook.

I know that creating content and showing up online can take a lot of time. It can be exhausting and it can be one of those things that when you are busy, it gets swept under the rug, and gets forgotten.
But if you create a content and messaging playbook, it's like a swipe file of all of your brand messaging, your offer messaging, your key content topics, so that you're not constantly having to reinvent the wheel every time you go to sell an offer or launch something or post something to Instagram or send an email to your list.
You can just pull from this playbook because you've already documented it all. It also means that your messaging becomes cohesive and consistent all the time. Everywhere that you are showing up online because you're saying the same things over and over again, which is what we ideally want.  And it's one of those things,
it becomes a living document. It's probably never going to be finished. You're going to keep adding to it as you create new offers, as you learn more about your ideal clients, as you learn more about your audience. It's going to grow and evolve, but once it's there, once you've got the bulk of it done, it becomes a lot easier to delegate any aspect of your marketing or your content because you know, you are the expert in what you do.
So even if you were to hire a copywriter to write your emails or write your Instagram captions, they are not the expert in what you do. So they still need you to tell them the rough idea of what you're trying to say. But once you've got that playbook done, you can give it to a copywriter so that the messaging they are writing is consistent.
Then they're talking about the right topics rather than having to guess. Because they're not the expert in what you do.

 

Create a sales process for each of your offers.

So in other words, what is the journey that somebody goes on before they buy each specific offer you sell?
For example, maybe there is an email asking them to fill out an application form and then you book them in for a discovery call where you present the offer to them and you sell to them. Maybe you are inviting them to join you on a live webinar where you are presenting the offer and selling to them at the end.
Maybe they are on your email list and they are getting a series of sales emails that are sending them to the sales page where you are addressing the hesitations that they have. You're addressing those hesitations in those emails as well. You might have a bunch of different sales processes depending on the offer.
So, for example, somebody might not buy a 10, 000 coaching package just off a sales page with no one-on-one call. But on the flip side, a $50 mini course probably doesn't require a one-on-one discovery call to sell that. So once you know what each process is, then you can start to streamline parts of it.
You can start to automate parts of it so that it's selling for you. You're not having to do all of the selling yourself and then your marketing becomes way more effective because you're not just reaching people. You're now also sending them to the relevant sales process for them and you're converting them from being slightly interested in what you're doing to being ready to buy. And once you have that right structure around your sales processes, this starts to amplify all of the results you get from your marketing. So every bit of effort that you put into reaching new people and growing your audience is now worth a lot more because you've got those sales processes that are converting these people into paying customers and clients.

 

Set up systems to streamline your operations.

There are some great tools out there that can really streamline your project management, your offer delivery, all of that. Leverage them, if you are still working off a paper to do list or your notes app on your phone, that needs to change, even if you are just one person doing all of the things, wearing all of the hats right now, you can start to set up these systems. You can start to set up the task management, the process management, the processes for the future so that when you get really busy and you have no time to learn how to delegate, you've already got the processes there. You can hire a virtual assistant and you can hand it off to them because you've got the processes. Here's the step-by-step instructions, and they can take it and run with it almost straight away. And come and ask me if you have questions, rather than suddenly getting into this panic state of, I've got so much going on, now I need to document all my processes so I can hire someone. If you are exhausted and overwhelmed in your business right now it's probably because you are missing some key systems and some key structures, which means that you need to pedal a whole lot harder to get those same results that somebody who has those systems in place is getting.
And then once you do have those systems and structure in place, it amplifies the results you get from everything else. So it means you also no longer have to wing it. It means that if you've got a project management tool. You can sit down at your desk and you can see, this is what I need to be working on this week or today to move me closer to my 12 month goals. Rather than sitting down reactively and thinking, Oh, this feels urgent. I'm going to work on this right now. So your business starts to feel a whole lot more structured, nicer, bit more calm rather than this chaotic hot mess where you don't know what you're meant to be working on and when you're meant to be working on it.

 

Implement systems to streamline your marketing.

So in other words, the systems for your content, regardless of what platform, regardless of whether you are on Instagram or you've got a YouTube channel or you've got a podcast or you're writing a blog, whatever it is, the systems for this content will make it so much easier and also systems for how you are getting in front of your ideal clients and growing your audience every month.
My business shares more than a hundred pieces of content across this podcast. To my email list, on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, everything. And we do it consistently every month. I have a team who helped me with it now. But there is no way we could be this prolific with the amount of content that we share, or we could be this consistent without the systems that we have.

 

Begin to delegate.

This is my favourite way of creating more freedom in my business. Just because something takes you a long time or you don't enjoy doing it doesn't mean it's going to take somebody else a long time.
There's probably going to be somebody out there who actually really enjoys the tasks that you hate because their brain is different to yours. So whether delegating looks like hiring somebody part-time to work for you, or even just starting to tiptoe into it and hiring a virtual assistant for five hours a week, delegating the things that aren't the best use of your time or the things that you don't enjoy can be such an effective way to speed up your business growth because now you can spend your time on the things that actually move the needle, the things that are your role is in the business that nobody else can replicate. But you need to have those systems and processes in place first because otherwise if you delegate before you have them it's going to create more work for you. And it's going to feel a little bit like you are just passing on tasks ad hoc and then you have to explain the task and it actually takes you a long time to explain it so you end up not delegating it because you're like well, it's quicker for me to do it myself. Whereas if you have those systems in place, your virtual assistant or whoever you're delegating to can log into the project management system.
They can see, Oh, this is what I need to work on today. These are the steps to do it. This is when it's due rather than you having to do all of that manually.