Episode Transcript
Nina Huchthausen (00:05.858)
Welcome everybody to the Makers Business Tribe podcast. In this week's episode, if you could see me dance, you could see my arms wiggle and move. And when I was thinking about what is the best topic to talk about this week, where I feel like everybody on this planet is at, or the conversations that we are having inside the
tribe this week or have had for a few weeks, I was like, I gotta talk octopus. Why? Because honestly, I feel like every second conversation I've been having with our tribe members or business owners outside of the tribe, whenever I said, my gosh, I'm feeling like an octopus right now. And they're like, me too. Me too. Because.
whether we have we are solo preneurs and we are a one man band and we're playing all the instruments and juggling all the balls in order to keep our business running and keep our business growing or whether we have a team or not, whether we have a team that we can delegate to.
We still need to manage them. We need to follow up. We need to create. We need to improve our processes. We need to think ahead. We need to pave the way. We need to check in. We need to make sure we need to support. We need to cheer. We need to problem solve. No matter what stage of business we are at, chances are as a business owner, you are being an octopus.
Meaning you don't just do one thing at a time, which we all just love to strive for. And ultimately, that's what we want to create. But chances are we are juggling multiple balls in the air. We are dancing with eight arms through the room. It might look elegant, but there's a lot to it.
Nina Huchthausen (02:28.504)
continuously doing more than one thing and continuously having the capacity and holding the capacity to look out, to look backwards, to look into the present, and to be able to smoothly and elegantly, like an octopus, move our business forward. Most of the time, it doesn't look like an octopus dancing, which is ridiculous because I love using that analogy.
When you're thinking about an octopus, they are very elegant creatures. The way they float through the ocean and very subtly, very gently move all those tentacles is beautiful. But if I look at how I sometimes operate, it's that beautiful.
But why do you think I could still talk about this if my business is slightly crazy, you can say I think I still am. Got a pretty good system in place most days and and so. For those who are very much feeling like, my gosh, I'm not slightly crazy, I'm going very crazy.
And I sometimes drop balls. I sometimes feel like I'm snowed under. I'm overwhelmed and I'm very much stressed out. And most of the time don't even know what to focus on. What needs doing and I see many, many fires just keep popping up and stresses me out versus meaning that I'm excited by it. I feel like, yeah, keep to practice new moves.
that maybe this episode is for you. Because ladies and gentlemen, we need to get that under control. think in an ideal world, as business owners, I would love you all to move like an elegant octopus, OK, versus just a duck.
Nina Huchthausen (04:43.822)
frantically paddling with its little feet underwater just to move it a little bit forward or chicken without a head or whatever your analogy is, you So over the past few weeks, I've shared my framework quite a few times on how I try to stay sane. Now, does this work always? No.
And we also need to consider there's life, there's babies, there is unforeseen stuff. But hey, I think we always want to give it a try to see how we can plan and organize things. if we plan at least on one area of life a bit more organized, then we at least know what's on the table. What do I need to move? Where do I need to focus on? And I can see maybe a
a fire popping up before it actually burns down the house. That was a bad analogy, but I hope it just gives you a taco. As you know, fires are not good. you know, take it, take it for that wonky analogy. So here's how I try and keep my business organized.
Because really it's mental organization. If the business was just a pile of papers, we could organize it in categories and files and all that stuff, but we can't. It's a business, it's living, breathing thing. first thing that I think is very, very important to always have super clear in our mind's eye, on our walls,
written out and on our desk is the goal. What are we aiming for? What are we aiming for in our business? Whether you are selling chai, candles, face cream, clothing, jewelry, supplements, protein powder, it doesn't matter. Or something different. We need to have a goal. The goal can't just be I get up and sell my product.
Nina Huchthausen (07:04.354)
You know, because that's a rat race. That's just a continuous rat race. And yes, on a daily basis, that's what we're doing. Same for me in selling a service and delivering a service. But if that's all I'm focusing on, I'm stuck in a hamster wheel. And chances are nothing is really moving forward or growing. So. The first thing, if you do not have it clear and you see yourself.
dancing a very wonky octopus dance day in, day out, and you're exhausted and tired and you might be dropping balls. You need to have a goal. You need to step back, pause right here and write out what is my goal? What do I want to achieve in six months time and 12 months time and three years time? Where do you want to be financially, health -wise, happiness, the impact you want to make in your business?
Where do you want to be? Very important. And get super clear on that and make it tangible and actionable. So you don't just want to write out, want more money, or I want to work less hours. How many hours specifically do you want to make? How much money do you want to make? How many lives do you want to have touched? How much of an impact do you want to have made? How do you want to feel?
important to get that super crystal clear. Yeah, because you want to know your why you want to know your end game. You want to know where are you heading? Because when life gets hard and busy and stressful in the moment, it can be very powerful to look up and say like, well, OK, I'm busy right now, but I know where I'm going. I know what I'm doing that for. Or.
You can be looking at that gong and kind of be like, what the fuck am I doing right now? I have no idea how what I'm doing today will get me there tomorrow. And that's even more important because then you can be like, off that horse, Nina. You're on the wrong horse. You're on the wrong horse. It doesn't make sense what you're doing. Yeah. And give you a very practical example.
Nina Huchthausen (09:26.378)
One of my clients shared with me when we first started working together that they want to move overseas and they want to travel and they want to do all sorts of things. Then second biggest strategy catcher, she's talking about setting up a brick and mortar business to sell her products in.
and potential, you know, getting a three to five year lease, maybe potentially even buying that thing. I was like, okay, cool. How is that going to align with you just want to take, just want to have everything online as much as possible to be able to run away? If you're building brick and mortar business and hiring staff and having business to run and to monitor, how's that going to
work is going to, is that the right move? Yeah. No judgment. But how is what you're planning to do right now enabling you to set up better for the future to make it easier to realize that goal. It was, I hadn't even thought about that, but I just thought, you know, I think my best thing would be to actually have more of a more of a brick and mortar presence. no, you're cool.
But what about the Pico?
And then she can realize, that might not be the best move. OK, cool. Makes it easy to, in that case, in that example, prioritize and kind of realize that's not my move. But then you can kind of see, well, what's a better move in that case? Yeah, because she was like, I'm very stubborn. I need to get my product more into brick and mortar. Well, awesome. Call the boutique distributor help. Could it help for you to?
Nina Huchthausen (11:23.512)
Go direct to retailers and get your products in there. And then ultimately have someone manage those relationships for you. And then orders can be directed from...
wherever you are managing your orders right now. And can you maybe potentially have a person that you hire receive the orders and pack the orders to make sure you have an internal person being part of that chain that can communicate with you.
Nina Huchthausen (11:59.256)
perfect that aligned a lot more. Just throwing in a little bit of strategy and ideation here. But without a goal, without that big goal, she would have created a wrong move for herself. And gone down a path that would not have aligned with a bigger vision. Another goal. Me personally, I want to have another baby.
haven't defined the date yet, but at some point I would like to have that. That is a big goal on my wall. Now I don't have the exact date, but I know that's what I'm prepping for. Meaning every day when I'm busy and doing stuff, I'm like, hey, can I set this thing up better and simpler for future Nina?
to hire another person to take this on? What steps can I take today? Or is this the best that it can be? Could I self myself time in the future? Is this baby friendly? Even the office that we're creating, the way we are continuously refining a program, I'm always thinking about, is that helpful? Is that the way I should be doing it now to set myself up for
When I want to have a baby, yes, no.
still powerful and it has helped me, man, I don't know how many times to make an informed choice of how I'm acting today because I can see what impact it could have for my future and whether I want that impact to happen or whether I should make them different choices today for a different outcome in the future. Because it helps us just that simple goal, helps me prioritize and helps me
Nina Huchthausen (13:57.452)
how I am approaching things. So for example, maybe, and that's the last example because I want to move on. Let's say you are a solopreneur and you're doing everything in your business, but you want to have a break. Okay. But right now,
you are making the product and you still haven't taken the time to write down how it's actually being made. Okay, well, if you're a big callers and 12 months time you want to go on a four week holiday, well, probably one of the most critical things is to sit down today or tomorrow and write out how you're making the product so that then in one of the following steps, you can start bringing someone in and teach them how to make the product.
Because if your product cannot sit on the shelves for a year, so meaning you can't make it months and months in advance, you will need someone to make product for you when you're away. So rather than you just keep telling yourself that you can do it on your head, the goal will force you to take a different action to prioritize, to really write down how to make the product and write down the
process of making that product so you can hire someone. Which brings us to that second step. Once we have a goal, it is important to break down what are the key mile markers to achieve that goal.
because the mal -markers will give us smaller goals. Yeah, let's imagine you go in 12 months time, you wanna go on a four week holiday. Well, and you're doing everything yourself today. If that's your goal, and if you are a solopreneur, you wanna put that down as a goal, at least because you need a break, my friend, okay? So we all, if we don't have any other big goals, we need to work towards, wanna have a break.
Nina Huchthausen (16:04.248)
because otherwise we can't sustain this. So key mile markers need to be that we have as the last step, all the people in place so they can take over running the business while I'm not there. Do not tell yourself you're going to pause the business for four weeks and then pick it back up. There's not just going to be a four week break. It's going to be an eight week or longer break or throttle because you're pulling everything down. So don't even make that as an option.
Okay, business needs to be there for growth. It can't just be for diddle -doodle alone. Okay, so means your last mile marker needs to be team is there, team is on boarded to start and running your day to day, not growth. Doesn't have to bring on new clients, but keeping the business running. Okay, because running means that should be process focused, that should be a machinery that
should be moving smoothly, right? So before we have the whole team set up, probably prior to that, we want to have a pipeline of people mapped out so we know who we need to hire first, second, or third. By the way, hiring doesn't mean full time. It could be part time. It could be contract. It could be casual. So don't be put off by, can't afford multiple staff. We can have that as few hours a week, OK?
So before that, we need to have that identified, and we need to have the role descriptions defined so that we know who do we need to put on positions based on where you are at. And probably before that, we need to have identified what the jobs are to be done. So jobs are to be done first, then we need to have the role descriptions written, then we need to hire those people on boarding, then you can go on holidays.
Prudently explained, right? There were four big steps. But if you have a goal in the future, in 12 months time, and you can just break that down into four major steps, and you've got 12 months to complete those steps, and you start with step number one, which I just mentioned, which is just defining what are the key jobs to keep the business running, or that you can then hire for that to find the roles.
Nina Huchthausen (18:31.928)
That gives you focus, right? That gives you focus. Because if you're like a cacao, so from today, I got three months to do that. And I know one of the things that I need to do in my business is invest time and energy into that part. And I know I have a deadline, because there are three more quarters with three more parts. And only if I do these on time, I will be able to reach my goal.
that creates focus, right? And if you've booked in your holidays, you know it's an unnegotiable and you need to really put some time into that.
So that's a really great way. Yeah. But that is the part of growing your business, working towards growth. Working towards growth is one of the key parts in any business. Because unless you're just completely content with where you are at and you do not want growth, you just want to achieve the same thing over and over and over again.
Nina Huchthausen (19:45.43)
Unless that's what you want, then you need to have a goal to work towards. But even that goal of just maintenance is a goal. And in a product business, unless you have a fixed contract with someone that buys all the units from you, that creates a consistent income, you need to put some effort in and probably beyond just waking up and selling in order to keep achieving that same goal.
So it's important to always define where you want to go. That's the first part. The second part is running of business. And that's probably the thing that can stress us out a lot, because that's the day to day to day to day. Every day and probably 80 to 90 % of our time is the day to day stuff.
Nina Huchthausen (20:42.606)
stresses me out, talk about thinking about it. But here's what I do to stay sane.
So.
First of all, I created this analogy for myself that I see business a bit more as a game. see life as a game of life to make it fun, to make it a bit more, you know, it's not a grind, it's not a chore, it's a game, okay? I keep playing this game, but it's a strategic game. I see it as a card game.
Now you decide whatever else game you might like. Yeah. But I see it as a card game. So I always think about, okay, cool. All right. Every morning I pick up my cards and there let's imagine Uno, yeah, to get multiple different colors. And the colors stand for something. I have a bunch of cards. Sometimes I have a lot of cards on my hands. I two hands. I have a little bit less, okay? So.
have these cards. And well, I only have so many hours in the day, and I need to play these cards. Yeah. Some of these cards, they need to be played every day. Some of these cards need to be played every week, every fortnight, every month. That's how I structure my different jobs. So
Nina Huchthausen (22:15.214)
So I have daily cards and those daily cards are the tasks, the jobs that I have to do every day. If I do not do them every day, the business is going to collapse.
or fairly negative reviews or shit would hit the fan.
We're going to identify them. I helped them to identify you in the moment. But entertain me for the moment. There are some jobs in your business that you know, and you could write them down right now. What is this stuff? If you do not do them every day, shit is going to hit the fan. Ideally, it should be very few things. Yeah. Sometimes we kid ourselves that there's a lot of things we need to do every day. But when you look at them, you're like, no.
shit is not going to hit the fan if I don't do them every day. Or nothing would happen, nothing bad would happen if I didn't do them every day. That's probably a question. Because really we want to move as much as we can into our weekly cards. At least. Where we can say, if these are the things I have to do,
once a week to make sure my business keeps running smoothly. Customers are happy, stock is happy, manufacturers are happy, accountant is happy, whoever that might be. Staff is weekly. So try and move as much as I can, at least into my weekly stack cards. My weekly cards, I see them as blue. My daily cards, I see them as yellow. And I got fortnightly cards, this is red.
Nina Huchthausen (24:05.004)
And monthly is green. So I divvy them up is that because my daily cards, that's where really my capacity throttles because the cards I have to play every day, they take a certain amount of time. Yeah. So I want to move them into into weekly. So I only have to play them once a week. And then if I can, fortnightly cards. So that's where as much as I have in my weekly basket.
I actually want to see, can I move them into Fortnightly? What would happen if I only did it Fortnightly? Yes, of course I would have to invest more time, but is there stuff that I could just do every two weeks? Or would shit really hit the fan? And then there's monthly stuff. Some is also quarterly, some is also yearly. Trying to sort of categorize everything that I need to do is like this big wheel of business.
And I slice it down into different little tasks and move it into those buckets. And ideally, reducing as much as I can, moving from daily into weekly, from weekly maybe into fortnightly, fortnightly into monthly. Because that creates a lot of flexibility. If I don't cram my whole day every day with the same stuff, I create capacity to slot in some work for the growth of my business, which is freaking fantastic.
So what does that look like in real life? Because I hope I didn't lose anyone here. So in an ideal world,
Nina Huchthausen (25:47.754)
I would hope as a product business owner, you might have identified a whole bunch of jobs and then you might've looked at, what has to happen daily? Otherwise the house is going to burn down, but it has to happen weekly. Otherwise the house is going to burn down fortnightly and monthly. And then you put a pen to a heart and can realize actually there's a lot more stuff I could do a lot less or a lot more.
bunch together versus every day a little bit. So once you've done that,
And let's make that practical. And I want to give you an example of what it looks like for one of our businesses after we've done this. And after this client had shared with me that she is literally working 12 hour days and she's still stressed out. Okay. So we looked at, okay, what is number one? She's making product. Okay. So meaning when you make the product, that means
You need to stay on top of ingredients and order ingredients. That's a job to be done. You need to make the product and store the product. You need to package the product. You need to ship the product. She also needs to sell the product. So there's a bunch of stuff she needs to do online. And she needs to work with, for her, predominantly stockists. Yeah. So her biggest channel is retail for now.
That's what she needs to take care of. And retail also, there is booking events and planning events and going to events. Okay. So in her case, what we said was, okay, so really, really the only thing that she needs to do every day without fail is being responsive to her stockists. She has existing stockists.
Nina Huchthausen (27:53.742)
And she understands stockists are really the cornerstone of her business helping herself. And if they have a question about the product, they have a concern or they need something, she's going to be there for them because that's her sales army. That's the team that gets the product to the masses. So every day she has to look after these guys. So what we did was okay, lunchtime between one and two, 60 minutes is where she's going to respond to customer emails.
or text messages or give them a call back. OK. That's a card that she's going to play every day. Because that's so close to the money. Existing stock is happiness, what we said. The second path that we've identified is what I just mentioned. Without fail, there is posting stock to either existing stockists, which she might do just twice a week, to be honest.
But B2C orders, which she also gets, that's what she's going to do without fail 4 PM at the end of each day to make sure that...
Stockists are happy, always stocked, and when customers order, which is also the closest to the money she can be, people are getting that as soon as possible without fail. Magic.
Now, then we looked at is there anything else that if she doesn't do it, shit is gonna hit the fan. And actually, no.
Nina Huchthausen (29:34.444)
Yes, she is making product, but her product, really, she used to just keep making it, just keep making it like a little bit here and a little bit here and be always in her office. But she realized, really, I got a shelf life of four months. I do not need to make this product every day. And in fact, if I start getting organized,
have all my ingredients there on time, have all my packaging lined up and can make a bit of a workstation, I can punch out a whole lot of stock if I just do it in one day, one day every fortnight. One day every fortnight, that means two production days within one month. And based on my current demand, I'll be sorted. So then we're like, okay, cool. Well.
It's a very important thing to always have stock. When can you do that? When she loves doing that is actually on a Wednesday evening. Cool. We plot that in Wednesday evening, six to 10, twice a month. Perfect. Well, based on that, I'm like, okay, cool, because she also used to spend a whole lot of time keep ordering ingredients here and there and kind of like looking on different sides and doing a thing. was like, no, you know,
You're only touching stock twice a month. So you will know after that whether you need to order new ingredients or not. So.
Once a fortnight, when you're packing up, check how much ingredients you have left and then you just place a reorder.
Nina Huchthausen (31:19.906)
If you don't keep looking for new stuff or for different stuff, it's important to process and reduce the amount of time you're spending. So you place a reorder straight after when you know you need new stock. That's it. And that's now penciled in and it's a task that ends the making process.
And it also what it also triggers. So on the Thursday morning, that's where every two weeks we just plastered in like a three week, three hour slot of like making sure if she needs new packaging, she can order that. If she needs ingredients, you can order that. And any loose ends from the making process, she will do that on that Thursday, blocked out without fail. In the past, she would always have her workstation open.
and kind of do things as in when she needed to, which was highly inefficient. So we're like, no, that card gets to be played reordering and stock management one day or in the morning of that next day.
Nina Huchthausen (32:34.188)
Then what we realized, OK, social media. So she's building out her online following and looking after her email management and her socials. Now, she used to do that every day. But really, in reality, it's a really great way, if we're super, super organized, we could plan and schedule everything a month in advance.
But hands down, we're like, how realistic is that? Yes, we know that from social media managers. That's what they do. And when you hire someone, they might do that with you a month in advance. But things keep popping up, right? And sometimes we don't have the creative juices. So what we are practicing with her rather than doing it daily and then spending a whole lot of hours of creating this upfront.
is that once a month she has a bigger planning session to actually look ahead of what's happening. And then twice a week she's doing, she's working on her social media as well as her email marketing for an hour or an hour to two each. And she's doing that in the afternoon because she knows that's when she has, that's when she has, she has patience for those types of things.
And then the last two things that are really important and critical for her to be blocked into her schedule without fail is making time for wholesale calls, wholesale calls, wholesale visits, or stockist calls, stockist visits. So, and because this is the thing that takes up a lot of her energy and a lot of her brain capacity,
We are front loading that big cart on a Tuesday. So every Tuesday, whole day, she is laser focused on visiting new stockists and in the afternoon, following up with existing ones, if need be. But that whole day, Tuesday, is on the road day. She has that marked up. And on a Thursday, follow -up day,
Nina Huchthausen (34:47.342)
filling the pipeline day without fail.
without fail. And that way, no matter what happens, she knows Tuesday, my big wholesale day, that's where I'm selling to them. Thursday is when I'm following up. Every day, 60 minutes, customer emails, customer response. Once a week, social media.
Every fortnight is when making and every Thursday after the making is when I'm ordering and getting stuff back in. So immediately, and you might have a bunch of other things on your list, and I will give you a link for you to download a sheet that lists out all the different jobs that you might have on the table.
as someone who is building out your stockist network as well as nurturing growing your stockist network. But immediately, you don't just have a whole long list of things to do, but you have them sorted and you have kind of like played the cards out in a nice picture so that you know when to focus.
And you might notice based on what I shared, she has holes in that because we haven't planned anything of what needs to happen on Friday. We haven't planned anything of what needs to happen every Monday. That gives her a lot of capacity for unforeseen things. But what we've actually penciled in that working on the big goal and taking those steps towards the mile markers, which the first one was, if you remember, was identifying
Nina Huchthausen (36:36.322)
the roles that she needs to hire for. In her mind, she has placed that on a Friday. So on a Friday, she's not in her office. She's not looking after stockers, nurturing them or sending out orders. That's where she's working on her big growth goals. So whatever those to -dos might be that she comes up with in order to work on those, she's gonna pack that till Friday. And on Friday,
When she plays her card of what we called forward planning, strategizing, that's when she's gonna look after that one. And still so much flexibility in her schedule to make sure that whatever life throws at her, she can deal with it.
Nina Huchthausen (37:27.062)
And that's really, I hope you could follow me along my way of softening all those octopus arms that you might have in your business, especially as a solopreneur or leading a team by breaking down. Number one, your goals, your mile markers, your steps and allocating.
a certain slot, whether that's in your week or in your month for you to work on that and getting super clear. What are your must -do's daily, your must -do's weekly, fortnightly, monthly. Then looking at everything and see, can you push it out further and then pre -allocating each week and each week you could change time for the dailies, the weeklies and so forth and just creating capacity for that and only
opening up the tabs for that when it happens. So if you have a daily of packing orders, make sure that you're like only thinking about that when you have defined it in your schedule, if that's 4pm, 4pm put the tools down and focus on that. Before that, focus on the things that you have on the list then. That my friends will keep you so sane. It's incredible.
So I really hope that was helpful and it's helpful to give you some type of structure to clear your mind, to stay focused and to let your shoulders drop a little bit and put your chest up and feel more confident to conquer the daily, monthly and quarterly craziness that we business on this space. But I wanna assure you.
We don't always get it right. I don't always get it right. And sometimes it feels really stressful. But then stepping back and kind of sorting the cards again and making sure there's a lot of sanity and structure in it can go such a long way. And with that, an awesome rest of your week. And I hope I see you next time.
