Serve Scale Soar®

The Only 3 Things You Need to Focus On to Scale a Service Based Business

• Brandi Mowles • Episode 295

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0:00 | 17:35

You are not doing too little. You’re doing too little of the right things.

I work one-on-one with 60 people a week inside Strategist Society, I’ve got over 1,000 people in Conversions For Clients, and across seven years I’ve worked with more than 3,000 freelancers. Same thread every single time: the to-do list is a mile long and most of it doesn’t matter.

The online space is loud. Post daily, be on LinkedIn, no wait, Threads, no wait, Facebook Groups are dead, no wait, they’re not. Holy bananas, is it noisy.

So in this episode I’m cutting through all of it. Three things. That’s the whole list. If it’s not one of these three, mark it off.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

  • Why only about 20% of your daily activity actually moves your business forward
  • How to run your marketing minutes in 30 minutes a day (and why Parkinson’s Law is the reason it’s taking you two hours)
  • The exact weekly structure: 25 names on Monday, 5 touchpoints a day, one channel only
  • Why the student doing $40,000 months still does her marketing minutes every single day
  • The difference between systems that buy back your time and systems you’re using to procrastinate
  • Which systems matter when you’re brand new (and why your logo isn’t one of them)
  • Why AI is genuinely bad at strategy, and why that makes expert knowledge your moat
  • The 3-question filter to run your to-do list through this week

Mentioned in this episode:

Ready to scale past $10K months?

This is exactly what I do with our students inside Strategist Society. I help you see why your to-do list feels so overwhelming, get you focused on what actually matters, walk you through the steps, and I’m there day to day on Voxer. If you want someone who’ll kick you in the butt AND help you grow your revenue, head to thestrategistsociety.com and apply for a call. It’s not a hardcore sales call. I’ll find your biggest gaps, tell you honestly if you’re a fit, and either way you’ll leave with clarity on your next step.


Loved this episode?

Leave a review on Apple or hit those stars on Spotify. That one minute is the best thank-you you can give me for all the free content, y’all. And screenshot this episode, share it to your stories, and tag me @brandimowles.

Now go do the dang thing.




Follow the Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/serve-scale-soar/id1477998650

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Follow Brandi on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Brandiandcompany

Episode 295

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Brandi: [00:00:00] I don't care if you are a brand new business owner or you've been doing this for years. When we start a business or we're running a business, one thing is true. We could be doing a million different things every single day and think that we're actually moving our business forward, when in reality, it's only about 20% of the things that you actually do that move your business forward from day to day, week to week, month to month, quarter to quarter, year to year.


And most of you are focusing on the wrong things. So in today's episode, I'm taking you through the only three things that you need to be focused on when running a service-based business. So if you're ready to cut down your to-do list and start focusing on actually moving the needle forward, this episode is for you Welcome, welcome back to the Serve Scale Soar podcast.


My name is Brandi Mowles, and if you are a first-time listener, I am so stinking glad you are here. And what I know more than anything is that if [00:01:00] you have a business, you are probably doing too many things. There's very rarely a time where people are doing not enough. But there is a time where you're doing not enough of the right things.


And so if you are brand new, this is gonna be a great episode, super actionable. If you're a returning listener, my friends, welcome back. We're about to hit 300 dang episodes. We've been doing this for a hot minute. So I appreciate you tuning in every single week to listen to me share tips and tricks for scaling your freelance ad management business or your one-on-one services.


And so if you've enjoyed this episode, if you've enjoyed the show, please go on, leave us a review on Apple or hit those stars on Spotify. Y'all, that little one-minute act does me so much. That is the best thing you can do to say thank you for putting out so much free content. So I appreciate you if you could take the time and do that for me.


Okay, y'all, so let's jump on in. I work one-on-one [00:02:00] with 60... It used to be women, now we have men, too. So 60 people on a weekly basis, and usually I'm talking to at least 30 on a daily basis inside of my mentorship strategy society. One, I get a lot of insight of what's going on into people's businesses and then, two, I work with over 1,000 people inside of conversions for clients, not at the same level, but on c- our calls that we do, our group coaching calls in the Facebook group.


And seven years, I've worked with over 3,000 freelancers, and so I have a lot of insight into what people are doing in their business. And I don't care if you just started it or you've had your business for years, one thing is a common thread. You're doing too much every single day, and chances are you're doing too little of what actually moves your business forward.


'Cause in the online space, there's so much noise. You need to post every day on [00:03:00] Instagram. You need to be on LinkedIn. You need to be on X. You need to be on Threads. You need to be on Instagram. You need to be in Facebook Groups. But wait, aren't Facebook Groups dead? No, there's no reach on Instagram. Wait, what?


I thought cold emailing was bad. No one can get people on cold email. Shouldn't I just move to AI products? Oh, wait, but what about digital products? And then I need a group coaching product, and then I should charge only $100. But no, this person told me to charge 10,000. It's noisy. Holy bananas, is it noisy.


But one thing that I know to be true after the last eight years of having my business is what we teach about your marketing minutes has not changed in eight years There are 10 ways to land clients that I teach. They all still work today just as well as they did eight years ago, and most of them work better now than they did eight years ago because there's a higher demand for ad managers now than there was eight years ago.


There's a higher [00:04:00] demand for highly skilled service provi- providers than there was eight years ago. And so one thing I know is when we look at our business, we're not looking for flash in the pan, shiny object stuff. We're looking at the tried and true strategies. But when I look at your to-do list, when I see what's going on, and you say you're overwhelmed, and there's too much, and you can't get everything done, it's because there is too much on your to-do list, too much stuff that does not matter, and we're using our time really poorly.


So I wanna break down the three things that every service provider needs to focus on if they wanna scale their business without burnout, right? 'Cause we can do a whole lot of stuff and burn the heck out, but who wants that type of business? I don't. I'm sure you don't. And so when we think about this, the first thing that matters more than anything is finding clients.


Your marketing minutes should be your daily priority, and I'm not talking about spending two hours. Sometimes people are like, "Brandi, [00:05:00] I'm spending two hours on my marketing minutes," and I'm like, "Why? Why are we spending so much time on marketing minutes? It shouldn't take that long." 30 minutes every day, Monday through Friday.


That's all it takes, y'all. And the reason it's taking two hours is 'cause you've allowed yourself to have two hours to do it. And so what is it? Parkinson's Law says that we will fill the time that we are allo- allotted. So what I want you to do... And probably 'cause you're jumping all over the platforms.


With our marketing minutes, we set a visual timer, and if you need to start with 45 minutes to get better than where you are at, great. If you're just getting started and you haven't been doing your marketing minutes, 30 minutes, whatever you need to do. But if it's been taking you two hours, let's just knock it down to 45 minutes.


If you haven't started yet, just start at 30 minutes, and I want you to get a visual timer. These are like the little kid timers, and we have them all over our house for homeschooling, for my office, everywhere, and I'm gonna set it for 30 minutes. And so what I'm gonna do is give myself 30 minutes, and my goal is to have [00:06:00] five Is to make five touchpoints in that time.


That's m- what my clock is racing. The way I'm e- able to do this every single day, Monday through Friday, is 'cause on Mondays I sit down and make my list of the 25 people I'm reaching out to that week. So I... That way my time isn't spent going and looking. And guess what? I give myself 30 minutes to do this on Monday, and then Monday I also have 30 m- minutes of outreach.


So Monday's my heaviest day. One hour marketing minutes. The rest of the week is just 30 minutes, 'cause then I already have my list and I'm just going through. And I'm gonna do that. And I'm only far- focused on one marketing channel. For me, that's Instagram. For some of our students, that's cold calling.


For some of them, it's in-person networking. So they go to their networking event on Tuesday, Wednesday, Monday, whenever it is, and then they use the rest of the week for follow-up. Some people, it's LinkedIn messaging. Some people it's Threads. Some people it's Upwork. It does not matter. The same thing applies.


And so I'm gonna make my [00:07:00] list on Monday. I'm gonna give myself 30 minutes to get my 25 names, and then the rest of the week it only takes me 30 minutes to reach out. If you're taking longer than that, one, you're distracted by other things, or two, you're trying to be a perfectionist. Outreach is not about getting the perfect message.


It's about getting the messages out, 'cause it's a, it's a numbers game. You h- just have to have enough numbers to make the numbers work to get calls, conversations, and clients, right? This is why we have Predictable Clients Workshop, which has been one of our most popular workshops. We'll link it up in the show notes below so you can grab yours.


But this is how you do the dang thing and move people from a touchpoint to then a conversation to then a call to a client. That's what we want. And so if you're not focused on your marketing minutes, 25 touchpoints minimum per week, and you're, like, spending two hours not even making progress, you're wasting time.


Or if you're not doing your marketing at all, [00:08:00] then we have a whole 'nother problem, because without clients you have no business. And this does not matter if you are completely full or if you have zero clients. No matter where you are in your business, you should be dedicating 30 minutes a day to your marketing minutes, because what happens?


I see this happen in Strategist Society multiple times, where I tell them, "I don't care that you're full." You still need to do your marketing. We have one of our students, she's doing $40,000 a month and still prioritizes her marketing, 'cause she knows if she loses a client, she wants to be able to replace it.


We have had people with a full client load, super excited, they stop doing their marketing. And I'm like, "What the heck? You need to do your marketing." And they stop, and then what happens? They lose two clients, and they're back down to 3,000, and they were at 10,000. That's what happens when we don't focus on our marketing.


When you are consistent in the habits, that every day, 30 minutes every day, that builds so much momentum that it's hard not to have clients on repeat. [00:09:00] And the people who constantly have consistent revenue and stability in their businesses are the ones who are doing their touch points daily. And I see it because we have trackers in Strategist Society.


So I can see the people who are getting clients, the people who are having their best months, are the people who are focused on their marketing minutes. Success leaves clues. If you wanna be successful, start doing your marketing consistently. Don't do it on Monday and then not again for a week. You won't get results.


It's just like your workout plan. You can't work out one day a week then not work out the rest and hope to see results. That's not how it works. And so consistency is what matters. Okay, so the first thing we have to do is focus on our marketing. That should be top priority. Second is we need to focus on the systems that we have to get us more time.


Systems can be all about, like, how does your reporting look on Fridays, right? So a lot of our people do reporting on Friday. What does that system look like? How much time are you using? [00:10:00] We created the ad reports on the automated ad report showing you how to use AI to create automated ad reports. Are they 100% perfect?


No. Are they a better starting point off than what you had spending hours? Yes. What is taking you the longest time? In Strategist Society, we have two podcast managers in there, and I'm saying, I said, "Do you have skills?" As soon as the podcast is done, you should have a skill for each client that you put in, and then everything is done besides editing.


That's what we do with this podcast. The blog posts get done. The emails get done. The Facebook post gets done. Like, all this gets done because we have skills. And so I'm asking them, "What do you have? Do you have these skills set up in Claude to systematize this? How are we getting more time back?" And so that's what we should always be looking at.


What does our onboarding process look like? And a lot of you like to spend time in this as a way to procrastinate from doing your marketing minutes. But that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that we focus on marketing, and then [00:11:00] as we start building our business, as we grow at every point, you're gonna have new systems that have to be implemented based on the growth and things that come up.


One of our students in Strategy Study, she needs to start hiring some VAs, 'cause she's at max capacity, and she still wants to grow her revenue. So she needs a VA. Before she did that, we had to create new systems, right? Before she could do that. If you're just starting out, your website, your logo, your branding does not matter.


You know what does matter? Your HoneyBook scheduler so people can schedule an appointment with you. Having a proposal template ready to go. Those matter. Having an off-boarding system doesn't matter if you don't have a client. So it's not wasting time in systems that don't matter. It's looking at what is taking the most time I have right now, and then creating a system to help automate it, save you time, or make you money.


That's what I'm talking about when I talk about systems. It's not a procrastination tool. It's actually helping you for where you're at right now, and different systems will be [00:12:00] needed at different spots in your business. But a lot of you are using systems as a crutch so you don't have to do your marketing And then the third thing that we always need to be focusing on, and some of you will argue with me "AI is this, AI is that."


No, this is so important. You have to become an expert at what you do. Expert knowledge is so important. Strategic knowledge is so important, and some of you just wanna sit and let AI think for you. And I'm sorry, but AI gets it wrong a lot. One thing that I've found that AI is really bad at, and we use AI for coding websites, sales pages, all that kind of stuff, but one thing it's really bad at is coming up with strategy.


Launch strategy, ad strategy, copy strategy I've seen it. It is so bad at strategy. And so you need to get better at that. I just had one of our Strategist Society members, and she's "I wanna get known for doing SLO funnels like, how do I [00:13:00] do that?" And I was like, "You have to learn how to do a good offer.


What makes a good offer?" And I said, "You need to go pick up Expert Secrets, DotCom Secrets, and Alex Hormozi's one- a million-dollar offer or whatever." And I said, "You study that. You get good at offers." For someone who's wanting to run ads, get really good at running ads and getting your clients results. This doesn't mean you're spending hours consuming content.


It means that you are always focused on different aspects of ads that will make you better. Let's say my weak spot for a long time was writing copy. You know how I got good at copy? Obsessing over every book that was about conversion copywriting, direct response. I'm not buying courses. I'm picking up books and reading about skills that are timeless.


Influence, that book, if you wanna get really good at persuasion, that is the book. If you're struggling on your sales calls, get really good at sales calls. I do a lot of [00:14:00] training on this. I have done a lot of sales calls to get really good at it. And so find the area that you need to get better at and hone in on that one thing.


Not buying courses, picking up books and reading them. This goes into our standards of excellence. We'll link that video in here, but we have a whole... or not video, but a podcast. We have a whole podcast episode on our standards of excellence, and one thing that I talk about in there is fueling your mind.


We wanna fuel our mind, but here's the deal, y'all. If you're only doing your marketing for 30 minute- or for 10 minutes, and then you're fueling your mind by consuming content for an hour, you gotta reverse that. Fueling our mind should be, like- 15, 20 minutes, maybe 30 minutes a day, but our marketing's first.


So it's marketing systems and then becoming an expert at what you do. And becoming an expert at what you do is not asking Claude to tell you how to write a great offer. [00:15:00] It's going in and reading the books that the greatest salespeople of our time, and before our time, have written. Because things like that, they don't go out of style.


They are, like, psychological principles and sales psychology that doesn't change based on what algorithm is working this week. And if you can hone in your craft, you will always be desired and be excellent. Even when AI is replacing other people, you will become irreplaceable. So when you look at your to-do list, I want you to think, "Is my marketing minutes on there?


What systems could I implement to save me time, to get more of my time back so I can live a life?" And then, "What is the weakest area of my business knowledge that I could pick up a book and start improving?" And if you look at your to-do list and it's not about getting your clients better results, it's not [00:16:00] about you finding more clients, and it's not about creating systems that save you time, mark it off.


We have a whole episode on your parking lot system, but when you focus on those three things, it's hard not to have a successful business. Nothing else matters. Okay? So hopefully this episode encourages you to go do the dang thing and not have a to-do list a mile long, but only focus on the things that actually move the needle and make you money.


All the other stuff is not necessary. If you have extra time, great. If you don't, awesome. Focus on those and your standards of excellence, and it's hard not to win. And this is exactly what I do with our students in Strategist Society. I help them see why their to-do list feels so overwhelming, help them focus on the things that matter, walk them through those steps, be there day to day on Voxer support with them.


And if that's what you're looking for, someone who's gonna kick you in the butt but also help increase your revenue, get your business [00:17:00] going, I would love to chat with you about if you're a right fit for Strategist Society. You can go to thestrategistsociety.com, apply for a call. We'll jump on a quick call.


It is not like a hardcore sales call. I'm gonna find out about your business, where your biggest gaps are, especially out of these three areas, and where we can fix, and then I'll share with you if I think you're a good fit for Strategist Society. I'll share with you what that looks like. And if you're not, that's okay.


You'll leave with clarity, knowing what your next steps are. Okay, my friends, this was this week's episode of the Serve Scale Soar podcast. Until next week, go out, serve your clients, scale your business, and soar into the success you deserve.