the
BUSINESS
BOOST by Abbey Kyhl
the
BUSINESS
BOOST by Abbey Kyhl
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Hey There! GETTING STARTED STEP 1 - IDEA DUMP STEP 2 - EXPERIMENT #1 STEP 3 - BIGGEST OBSTACLE STEP 4 - LET'S TALK ABOUT PIE STEP 5 - LET'S TALK MONEY STEP 6 - LET'S PLAY A GAME STEP 7 - STOP HITTING REPEAT! STEP 8 - RESEARCH SYSTEMS STEP 9 - TWO YEAR PLAN STEP 10 - WHO ARE YOUR CLIENTS? STEP 11 - WHAT IS YOUR SPECIALTY? STEP 12 - WHAT DO YOU NEED? STEP 13 - WHAT ARE YOU MISSING OUT ON? STEP 14 - TAKE A LOOK BACK
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STEP 15 - CONTRACT YOUR LIFE AND LOVES STEP 16 - CONTRACT YOUR BUSINESS STEP 17 - CONGRATULATIONS!!! STEP 18 - CONTROL YOUR SURROUNDINGS STEP 19 - PICK YOUR POLICIES STEP 20 - BE SEXY, BE RAD, AND BE OBSESSED! STEP 21 - DOCUMENTS DAY: GATHER STEP 22 - DOCUMENTS DAY: DESIGN STEP 23 - SET UP SYSTEMS STEP 24 - WORK ON THE “WORKING DRAFT" STEP 25 - AN EDUCATION IN SOCIAL MEDIA STEP 26 - EXPERIMENT #2 STEP 27 - BECOME A CLIENT CARE SPECIALIST! STEP 28 - START DREAMING BIGGER STEP 29 - E-X-P-L-O-D-E STEP 30 - THE NEXT THIRTY
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Meet Abbey
THE BUSINESS BOOST | ABBEY KYHL | THEAKCREW.COM
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HEY THERE! 2
I
am so glad that you have decided to participate in the Business Boost! I know that you are going to love it. This program is like nothing I have ever done before. I have had so many people come to my workshops and I always
wonder if they just go home and only do a few of the things that I taught them. I have been guilty of this before! I don’t think it’s because we only want to do a little bit, it is because we just don’t know how to integrate it all. We don’t know how to stay on track and aren’t sure where to start. Well that is what the Business Boost is all about. I have broken it all down for you and made it into achievable steps. I truly believe we can all achieve success, and I know that if you follow this system you will have the tools you need to chase your biggest dreams! So let’s do this!
xoxo Abbey
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GETTING STARTED 4
THE BUSINESS BOOST | ABBEY KYHL | THEAKCREW.COM
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getting started
So in order to get started there are a few things you are going to have to do.
1. set time aside The only way this system will work, is if you set time aside to work it. There are going to be some steps that take days to accomplish, others only a few hours. If you really want to get through it as quickly as possible, I would recommend setting aside at least two hours a day and make a note for yourself, Steps 5, 7, 15, 16, 18, 21, 22, and 23 are full day or multiple day projects. Remember, you are setting up your business to be successful long term, and that can’t be done in a day. It takes time!
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2. don't jump ahead This will probably be the hardest thing for you to do. But here’s the thing, I have spent a LOT of time preparing this in a way that you can accomplish it all and be successful. If you jump ahead, you aren’t going to give each step the time and attention it deserves. You will get done the “easy” stuff and miss some of the most important parts. This guide requires a lot of thinking and for you to really look at your business, your goals, what you want for your life, and then to create a system that works for all of those elements. So I promise you ...if you will go step-by-step you will be far more successful.
3. trust me This step goes hand-in-hand with number two. You have to trust me. I can guarantee to you, I have been right where you are. I have been through and seen it all. I know what its like to feel like you’re drowning in your business, to have too many clients, or no clients at all, to not be making the money you should be, and so many more things that you are most likely going through. I have spent a lot of time coming up with a better way, a way I am so excited to share that with you. But you have to trust me! Take it step-by-step, give yourself the time to really create something amazing, and then go out and live your dreams.
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getting started
4. be completely honest with yourself There are going to be parts of this experience where you are going to have to ask yourself some really hard questions about what you want out of life. I teach all of my students that the definition for success is different for all of us. We all need to figure out what our vision of success is and chase that. We need to be honest with ourselves about what our strengths and weaknesses are. We can’t do and be everything, but by being honest with ourselves we can address our weaknesses and find a solution to them and we can embrace our strengths and use them to do something amazing! Its time to have a heart-to-heart with yourself.
5. be prepared to make decisions Now is the time! If you want to do this course, you are at a place in your life where something has to change. You are most likely sitting on the fence, standing at the edge of the cliff, or some other funny metaphor...but its time. It is time for you to start making the big decisions, taking the big risks, and doing what you need to do to explode your business and have not only the business but the life you have dreamed of. Your business is just a tool to fuel your dreams, but if you don’t make decisions about your business, nothing will ever happen!
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6. work hard! I would say the number one question that I get asked is, “What is the one thing that made you successful?� And the truth is there is no one thing, there is no secret to success, there is no magic tip, except this; The one thing I did was work my butt off to get it. I knew that I could have a certain type of life and that I could build a business around that, and so I did what I had to do and worked incredibly hard to get it. So if you are going to do this, and really take everything to the next level, you have to be willing to work hard.
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getting started
30 STEPS!?! I know what you are thinking...WHAT!!! THIRTY STEPS!!! Oh geez...but think about it this way, it took me five years to really get my business off the ground and to start living the life that I had dreamed of. Think about this, if you attended college, how long did it take you to finish your degree? Rome wasn’t built in a day, and you can’t build a thriving, successful business in a day either. And lucky for you, I am giving you the steps and tools you need to do that in quite possibly thirty days if you really wanted to work hard. Granted, I think it will take longer than that because there will be certain steps that take you days to really evaluate and make decisions on, but how quickly you get through it is all up to you. But I can guarantee you that if you work the steps, take the time to really give them your all, and take my advice in building your business, you are going to accomplish something amazing and have your own busy thriving business!
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I believe so much in this program and what I am going to teach you, that I am offering you a money back guarantee! If you work all the steps, do what I advise, and your business doesn’t grow, I will refund you the cost of the course!
Get Started
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STEP 1 12
IDEA DUMP
Today you are going to sit down somewhere quiet and alone. Don’t do this at home. Leave your normal surroundings and go some where you won’t have any distractions. You will need at least a good two hours to do this, but it could honestly take all day. I just want you to start writing, not typing, writing.
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STEP 1
Here are some of the things you need to write down and think about:
Projects you want to work on Every idea that you have about any part of your business Things you think need to change Everything you think is going great and working for you Aspects of your business that you feel need addressing Struggles you are having in your business Goals you have and want to accomplish People you want to work with (both clients and vendors) Special projects you have been wanting to do Things you want to do that you think will make you stand out BIG DREAMS...things that seem impossible but you want to have happen
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Take time to think, let your brain just completely unload and let the ideas start flowing. Once you get going, so many things will come to your mind. I also recommend devoting a single page to each aspect of your business. Some examples could include website/blog, clients, marketing, social media, workflow, special projects, getting published, money, education, etc...
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STEP 2 16
EXPERIMENT #1
Today we are going to take the first step to living a more unplugged life. Remember how I told you that you are going to have to trust me, well this is our first “trust exercise.”
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STEP 2
Here is what I want you to do...
1. CLEAN OUT YOUR INBOX By the end of step 2 you can’t have even a single unread email. If things are more than a year old delete them. But in order for this to work you need to completely be ready and have the time to manage what I am going to have you do. An empty and organized inbox is vital to that. For the duration of this experiment you cannot go to bed at night with unread and unaddressed emails.
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2. UNROLL.ME Go to Unroll.me and see how many subscriptions you are subscribed to and cut that number by 70%. Get rid of shopping ads, vendors you have no desire to work with, etc. You have to cut it by at least 70%. So if you are subscribed to 100 differ- ent sites, 70 of them have to go.
3. RESCUETIME.COM Sign up at www.rescuetime.com on all of your computers. This is going to start tracking how much time you spend on which sites. Get ready to have your mind blown.
4. NO TV Make a commitment to yourself that for the duration of this program you will not watch TV while working. It will be hard, but it will be worth it.
5. GOODBYE FACEBOOK Take Facebook off your phone. Trust me. I have had people in my workshops, who when asked to take this step, have literally been shaking and in tears. I promise it will be fine.
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6. SPOTIFY STEP 2
Create a Spotify account with a few different types of playlists. One that will PUMP YOU UP! I listen to this while I am editing and trying to get through tasks quickly. Its great also for when you are doing boring but necessary tasks. Create another one that will help you CHILL OUT! I use this one when I need to think, focus, and make important decisions.
7. UNPLUG Determine two hours a day when you are going to be unplugged. These are hours with no phone, no computer, no TV, just completely unplugged. This also can’t be time when you are working. It has to be two hours of personal unplugged time.
8. CONSOLIDATE Go through your phone and get rid of and consolidate all apps down to one page. Organize them into folders. But only allow yourself to have one page. You also need to get rid of any and all red buttons. Do all the updates, turn off all the notifications, whatever you have to do to get rid of the red buttons. Get rid of all games on your phone, even the ones you have “for the kids.” I promise you, I am not trying to make your life miserable. You will thank me later!
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9. CREATE A WORK SCHEDULE What are your business hours going to be, when are you going to work and when are you going to live? If you want to be part time, set aside 20-25 hours a week. If you want to be full time set aside 40-45 hours. And this has to include every single aspect of what you do for your job. Like for me, this includes everything I do behind the camera and behind the computer.
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STEP 3 22
BIGGEST OBSTACLE
A
re you surviving from yesterday? I realize its hard, but trust me; It will bring you such great results in your life! So today, I have a simple exercise for you, I want you to get out your notes from Step 1 and read through
them again. Then I want you to get a brand new piece of paper and I want you to write at the top, “What is my biggest obstacle?� What is keeping you from success? What is standing in your way? If you had to attribute it to one element what would it be? Obstacles could be things like time, money, the desire to be a good parent, etc. Obstacles are not bad, they are just things we need to address. I want you to write it down and write why that obstacle is keeping you from success in your business.
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STEP 4 24
LET'S TALK ABOUT PIE
Today is a three step process. So the first step is this. I want you to create a pie chart of how much time everything takes in your business. You have to include every element. For me, some of those things would include shooting, editing, client communication, travel, social media, blogging, contracts, collecting payments, the list goes on and on...so create a pie chart that reflects the time you spend doing the things in your business.
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Now we are going to talk about money. I want you to create a pie chart that
STEP 4
reflects all the different places where you make money. This one will probably take some research. For me some of the elements could be things like shooting weddings, shooting portrait sessions, selling prints, teaching, coaching, etc...If you are only doing one thing right now to make money (like shooting) break it down into smaller quantifiable slices like types of sessions.
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Now that you have your two pie charts I want you to ask yourself the following questions:
Is what you are spending the most time on the thing that is making you the most money? Are there things that you are devoting a lot of time to that are in the bottom three as far as your income producers? Are there things that you are doing that are making you a lot of money that you could devote more time to in order to make more money? What do you see as the three ways you are utilizing your time the best? What do you see as the three ways you are wasting your time the most? If you could change both pie charts in three ways what would they be? Now I want you to email me your pie charts and the answers to the above questions. abbey@abbeykyhl.com. Now go eat some real pie or your favorite treat because that was a lot of work and pie makes everyone feel better, right?
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LET'S TALK MONEY Today is going to be one of the biggest and probably most time consuming of the steps that we are going to do. So just prepare yourself. It’s also one of the most important. Before we can even get into specifics of any business we have to talk money. Money is what makes a business. If you aren’t making money, if you aren’t making a profit, it means you are in a really poorly put together charity. Because even really successful charities make money. So today’s step is this: I want you to sit down and complete Stacy Reeves Pricing Guide. It is truly going to blow your mind, I promise. Do the entire guide, don’t skip steps or breeze through them. By doing this guide, it will give you the realistic perspective on your business that you are going to need to move forward.
STEP 5 **the pricing guide is in the classroom**
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LET'S play a game That last step was a lot of work right? It totally blew your mind, didn’t it! I hope it really opened your eyes to what you should be charging and should be making? Well after all that hard work, I think we should play a game. The game is called...
STEP 6 THE BUSINESS BOOST | ABBEY KYHL | THEAKCREW.COM
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STEP 6
“If I had an assistant” I want you to sit down today and write out all the things you would have an assistant do if you had one. These can be work tasks or life tasks, but write down everything. Some of the things that you could give to an assistant would be:
Things you hate to do. Things you never get to, because you hate to do them. Repetitive tasks that have to be done to operate your business, but it isn’t absolutely necessary that you actually be the one doing them. Think through every aspect of your life. That’s right, I am talking about laundry. Tasks you could give away that would open up more time for you to do the things you are best at, that you love, and also give you time to do all those projects you want to do and never have the time to get to. Time consuming errands and tasks. Things you are always running behind on.
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STOP HITTING REPEAT! Today is going to be a somewhat easy day, because tomorrow is going to be a lot of work where you will need a really big chunk of time that you can be online doing research. So here is today’s task: I want you to write down all the repetitive tasks that you do in your business. Everything you do for every single client. Manual tasks that you do over and over. Online tasks that you do over and over. Think through your entire customer experience and write down everything that is done over and over. You could even think about questions you are answering over and over. Emails you are typing continuously. This could be absolutely anything...
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RESEARCH SYSTEMS So now that you hopefully have very thorough lists from Steps 6 & 7 made, we need to figure out a few things...
What are the things you could use the most help with? What are the things you like doing the least? What are the things that only you can do? What would be the top five things you would like to give up? What are your most repetitive tasks?. Which are the things you are having to constantly redo?
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I want you to send me an email covering Steps 6-8 and I am going to send some
STEP 8
suggestions. (abbey@abbeykyhl.com). And with all the things in mind from those steps, I want you to start researching systems that would help you overcome some of those issues. When you email I will not only send you suggestions, but I am going to send you a list of some of my favorite systems. As you are researching the different systems out there, I want you to really take the time to compare them. I also want you to be thinking heavily about how you could create a system that would afford you to have an assistant. What if you took on one more client a month to pay for an assistant? Would that be feasible? What could they get accomplished and how much time would that buy you to be able to do more im- portant things?
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2 YEAR PLAN - 10 BIG GOALS I am big into planning, and I think it is one of the elements that has been one of the most important keys to my success. I truly believe you can never plan too much. So what I would like you to do is make a two year plan today. Where do you want to be in two years? What do you want to have accomplished? I think two years is a perfect amount of time. One year is so short and goes by so quickly, and five years is just too long. Who knows what anyone will be doing in five years. So let’s shoot for two. Look back on all your notes from the first day and the last few days you have been doing everything and come up with a two year plan. With that, I also want you to sketch out Ten Big Goals! Things you think are just too big for you, but would be your “shoot for the stars” type goals. Trust me, putting them on paper gets you one step closer to accomplishing them and makes these seemingly crazy goals even more real.
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As you are writing out this plan, I also want you to start adding in “action items�
STEP 9
that will be necessary to get you there...Skills you will have to gain, things you will have to do, vital education, necessary changes, decisions that will have to be made. You could even start putting dates next to some of these things. Really fill in this two year plan and the goals as detailed as you can. You are writing out your future, so be detailed and aim big.
GOAL 1 ACTION GOAL 2 ACTION GOAL 3 ACTION GOAL 4 ACTION GOAL 5 ACTION
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GOAL 6 ACTION GOAL 7 ACTION GOAL 8 ACTION GOAL 9 ACTION GOAL 10 ACTION
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STEP 10 38
WHO ARE YOUR CLIENTS?
T
he only way you can market to your clients is by figuring out who they are. One of the most life-changing elements of business is knowing who your ideal client is. It honestly changed everything for me. Once I
knew who my ideal client was, I was able to completely target market to them and attract more clients just like them. Makes business pretty wonderful. So this step is all about really figuring out who your ideal client is. Here is how you can determine that:
EXAMINE YOUR PAST CLIENTS No matter where we are in our business, we have all had at least one ideal client. Its just a matter of creating a profile for this ideal client. Look through all your past clients. What similarities do they have? Which clients were a better fit for you? What made them a better fit? Why were some experiences easier than others? Which customers were easy to communicate with? How did you communicate with those customers? Looking outside the client experience, what are some of the personality traits of those clients that you seemed to connect better with? Start writing out all the similar details of clients and grouping them. Depending on where you are at and how many customers you have had, narrow down the profile to 5-10 ideal clients that you can use as a reference.
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STEP 10
EXAMINE YOURSELF If you don’t know who you are, you will never be able to determine who your ideal client is. Your identity and their identity need to go hand in hand. People want to hire other people that they can relate to. So chances are that the clients who you had a better experience with preferred to do things the way you preferred to do them. Chances are, outside of your company, you have other similarities and likes. Start to pull out some of the elements that bring you together. These will become important topics for marketing later as you are trying to make a connection with them.
DETERMINE SIMILAR VALUES As you look over the clients you were able to pull out as fitting this ideal client profile and looking at yourself, what similar values do you have? Do you prefer certain ways of communication? Do you prefer working more in-person or more via the internet? Start to further pull out similarities in how you prefer to live your life and also operate in business. By knowing what each of you value, and the similarities you have, it will help you to determine not only how you should interact with them, but also what your business policies and operations should be.
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GET SPECIFIC The more you can narrow down this profile, the easier it will be to target them. I even recommend going as far as to write down their names and posting it somewhere you can see it as you are planning out your marketing strategy. And when you are making decisions ask yourself, what would they think? Would they like it? As you are planning your business ideas and marketing strate- gies always keep them in mind.
HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE TREATED Start treating your clients the way you want to be treated as a client. The longer I have been in business, the more I realize, that my ideal clients are someone that could be a friend of mine, someone who I would want to hang out with, and someone who likes to live their lives the same way that I live mine. So by treating them the way I would want to be treated makes for a more pleasant experience for us both. Just think of it as the Golden Rule of Business...treat your clients the way you want to be treated.
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KNOW HOW THEY ARE FINDING YOU You want to continue, and even strengthen, the ways you are reaching out to your ideal clients. This is your lifeline to them and chances are your future ideal clients have similar preferences. If you are finding that they are all finding you on Facebook, you should focus on Facebook more than other avenues, etc.
Just think of it as the Golden Rule of Business...treat your clients the way you want to be treated. 42