24. The One Meeting You're Not Having (That's Keeping You Stuck)

If you've ever thought you were too busy to step back and work on your business, this episode is going to challenge that thinking in the best way. Ginny shares a real conversation she had with a solo business owner who felt completely overwhelmed at the idea of committing 90 minutes a week to strategy. If that sounds familiar, this one is for you.

In this episode, Ginny breaks down why most one-person operations get stuck in the weeds, and what it actually takes to start climbing out. She explains the difference between working inside your business, answering phones, doing the work, sending invoices, and working on your business, the strategic thinking that determines whether you are doing the same thing alone a decade from now or building something that gives you your life back. One job pays the bills today. The other one builds the business you actually want.

Ginny introduces the concept of a Camp One Mastermind, a standing weekly meeting that serves as the foundation for working strategically, whether you are the only one in the room or you are building toward a small group of business owners at the same stage. She walks through what those 90 minutes can look like week by week, using a solo appliance repair technician as an example, and shares the personal accountability structures she has built in her own business journey, including her BNI experience and the peer groups she relies on today.

Three things to take away from this episode: First, working on your business is not something you do when things slow down. It is the practice that creates the slowdown. Second, isolation is what makes busyness feel unmanageable. Getting the right people around you changes everything. Third, the habit comes first, and the answers follow. Start with 90 minutes, same day, same time, every week, no exceptions.

If you are ready to go deeper, visit OutcomeAcademy.com to learn more about the Camp One Mastermind and how to get started.

Thanks for listening to The Outcome Academy Podcast.

If you enjoyed this episode and want to keep learning how to work ON your business with systems, strategy, and practical tools, here are a few ways to stay connected:

Website: https://www.outcomeacademy.com/ 

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Your outcome isn't a wish. It's a decision.

Transcript

What if the one thing that could get you out of the weeds was something that only took 90 minutes a week? And what if the reason you haven't done it is because you think you're too busy? But that busyness is exactly your problem.

Welcome to the Outcome Academy Podcast. I'm Ginny Seeley. I'm a business strategist and longtime process improvement expert. I also co-own an appliance service business and a co-working space with my husband, so I understand growth, leadership, family, and all of it.

If you're a service-based entrepreneur or executive who wants to stop putting out fires and work on your business and build momentum with systems, smart marketing, and practical tech, you are in exactly the right place.

Well, hello, my friend, and welcome back.

Today, I want to start by telling you about a conversation I had this morning. I sat down with a business owner, a one-person shop, someone who is exceptional at what they do, genuinely talented, and we were talking about what it would look like for them to get some support, some structure, some strategy.

I mentioned that the commitment for my Camp One Mastermind is one and a half hours a week or so. That's it. Ninety minutes.

And they looked at me like I had just asked them to climb Everest.

They said, “Ginny, I can barely get through my to-do list right now. I do not know how I could possibly carve out an hour and a half every week.”

And I want to be super clear with you. I get it. I understood that completely. I absolutely don't want to dismiss that because when you're in the thick of it, when you're the only one answering the phone, doing the work, sending the invoices, ordering supplies, handling an upset customer, and trying to figure out how to get more leads, 90 minutes feels ridiculous—like a luxury you absolutely cannot afford.

But here's what I told them, and here's what I need you to hear today.

That feeling is not a sign that you're too busy for strategy. It's a sign that strategy has become urgent.

When you feel like you cannot pull back even for 90 minutes, you have just identified the exact reason that you need to.

Let's take a minute and talk about what's actually happening when someone reaches that point.

You started your business because you were really good at something. Maybe you're great at fixing HVAC systems. Maybe you're the best bookkeeper your clients have ever had. Maybe you do lawn care so well that your customers tell all their neighbors.

You built something real from skill and hustle.

But somewhere along the way, the business started running you instead of the other way around.

If you haven't listened to Episode 7 yet, it's definitely a good one to listen to. It's called Do You Own a Job or Do You Own a Business? So go back and hit that one after this if you haven't listened to it yet.

The thing is, nobody really teaches you how to switch gears. Nobody sits you down early in your business and says, “Hey, there are two different jobs here.”

There's the work inside your business—the service calls, the client deliverables, the daily operations.

And then there's the work on your business—the strategy, the systems, the decisions that are going to determine whether you're doing the same thing alone 10 years from now or whether you've built something that actually gives you your life back.

Those are two different jobs.

And when you're a one-person show, you have to do both.

But most solo operators spend 100% of their time and energy in the first job and zero in the second.

Not because they don't care about building something bigger, but because the first job is right there. It's urgent. It also pays the bills.

It's the phone ringing, the customer waiting, the deadline attached to it.

The second job—the strategic one—kind of whispers. It doesn't call you. It doesn't send you a text. It just sits there in the background, looming quietly, waiting for you to choose it.

And if you never intentionally make that choice, it just never happens.

Here's what I want you to walk away with today from this episode:

Working on your business is not optional.

It's not something you can do when things slow down.

It's a practice that creates the slowdown for you.

You're not going to find the time. You have to make the time.

And the way you make it is by treating it like an appointment that cannot be moved.

I talk a lot about the Business Mountain Framework—the idea that building a business is like climbing a mountain. There are different altitudes, and each one has its own terrain, its own challenges, and its own set of things that you have to have in place before you can safely move higher.

Camp One is one of those altitudes.

At Camp One, you've got the basics running. You're generating revenue, but you still haven't built a team, and you're the center of everything.

Camp One is a pivotal moment in your business because it's where a lot of business owners stay stuck for years—not because they're not working hard, but because they never built the habit of working strategically.

The tool that changes that is simple, and it's not fancy:

A standing weekly meeting with you and your coach.

So usually a mastermind has maybe four to seven or eight people in it. That's how Joe and I started out in our mastermind experience. We joined our first mastermind, which included several appliance repair businesses, really early in our business when we were definitely solidly in Camp One.

And that was absolutely life-changing for us and for our business.

So here's what that means in practice.

You block 90 minutes on your calendar every single week.

Not when things slow down. Not when you have something to talk about.

Every single week, on the same day and at the same time.

And during that 90 minutes, you're not doing any client work. You're not checking email. You're sitting in the role of business owner, not technician.

And you're asking yourself the kinds of questions that actually move the needle:

•  What worked this week and what didn't? 
•  Where is money leaking? 
•  What systems are breaking down? 
•  What decision have I been avoiding? 
•  What does the next 90 days need to look like? 
•  What do I need to learn, hire out, or stop doing altogether? 

Typically, for Camp One business owners, they still haven't even nailed down all of the things in Brand Builder Blueprint.

Things like checking to see if their name is being used by anyone else by searching the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, learning a really great one-liner for their business that they can just spout out in conversation without even thinking about it, an elevator pitch, their mission, vision, and values, their website, a blog page on their website, all their social media channels, and making sure it's super easy for somebody else to tag them on social media.

All of those things are just the beginning in a Camp One Mastermind.

Then we start looking at things in the Compound Marketing Machine. We do things like content marketing strategy, optimizing your Google Business Profile, and setting up a newsletter that you can send out to all of your existing clients.

These are all foundational things that are really important to do before you even start hiring people.

You want to have these things in place and then start thinking about how you're doing things, the best way to do things, and how to capture those into procedures that you can hand off to somebody when you do hire someone.

All of these things are Camp One activities that you want to work through.

And the only way to start checking all those boxes is to make sure that you carve out this time for yourself.

Now, you don't absolutely have to have a coach to do this. The reason I recommend it is that as soon as you have another human being who is going to be waiting for you at that appointment, you're going to show up.

If it's a meeting with just yourself, ask yourself honestly: Are you going to hold that meeting with yourself? Are you going to carve out that time every single week to work on your business if you don't have another person who's going to ask you about it or meet with you and hold you accountable?

If the answer is yes, then I hope this episode is your motivation to start doing it right now.

If you're that type of person who can hold yourself that accountable, that is so awesome. This is your wake-up call to go ahead, put that on your calendar, and make that appointment with yourself every single week.

But if you're like most of us and it really helps to have somebody there to hold you accountable, you have two other options.

You can create your own mastermind group and invite some other people who are in business that you know and trust, and schedule that meeting together.

This is something I've done often in my business journey. I have an accountability partner, Shayna Shadowen from My Office Health in Illinois, and we meet every single week. We hold each other accountable for life goals and business goals.

I also have a peer group of course creators who help and coach people in various areas. One lady helps people plan events. One lady is an eating disorder coach. Then there's myself, coaching small businesses.

We meet once a week and hold each other accountable.

Then I have the masterminds that I'm in within the appliance world.

One is a peer group that meets once a month and was arranged through our association, the United Appliance Servicers Association.

Another one is the mastermind I mentioned earlier. We meet every single Monday at 8:00 p.m. because that's what worked for everybody when they were in the Camp One stage of their business before they had a team, and it kind of just stuck.

So if that's something that feels like a block for you, if you just can't imagine finding time during the day because you're so busy serving other people, I want you to think outside the box.

Is there a time before business begins in the morning that you can do this? Or a time in the evening? Or even on the weekend when you can gather with people?

Try to find a time that works for you and commit to 90 minutes.

Remember: not doing client work, not checking email, not being a technician or service provider. Just asking yourself important questions that move the needle in your business.

The business owners that I know who are solidly in Camp Two, Camp Three, or even Camp Four are people who have carved out time during the week to have a meeting.

And it starts with this very important meeting with yourself as a habit.

Then, as you start hiring team members, you have to have meetings with them because they need your guidance. They need you to show up for them, check in, and talk about what's going on in the business and your expectations for the week.

We do that in the form of team huddles at Cavalry. We have a weekly team meeting, and we're about to institute a weekly management meeting now that we have built out part of our management team.

Let's walk through what this looks like.

Let's pretend you're an appliance repair technician. You're running solo right now.

Your day starts early and ends late. Somewhere in the middle, you're returning calls, ordering parts, and doing actual repairs.

You're good at it. Your customers love you.

But you have no idea if you're profitable.

You haven't updated your pricing in two years.

You know you need a system for tracking your jobs, but you really haven't found one that works well for you.

You may have tried one and it wasn't great. Or you're thinking about switching. Or you've seen a lot of Facebook messages about different systems.

But you definitely haven't thought through what your business looks like in five years.

Now imagine you block 90 minutes on Tuesday mornings. No service calls before 10:00 a.m. on that one day each week.

You sit down with your notebook or laptop and start the meeting.

Week one, maybe you go through each of the 16 categories in the Business Mountain Framework and get everything out of your head for each category.

Then the next week, you've gone through your list and organized and prioritized what's most important right now.

What's driving you crazy?

What's a fire you're constantly putting out?

What's costing you money?

Those are your biggest priorities at the moment.

That is useful strategic work.

You're identifying friction.

Week two, you pick the top thing and spend 45 minutes thinking through what a solution would look like and what it would take to implement it.

Maybe you call someone who knows the answer.

Maybe you Google something.

Maybe you sketch out a process on paper.

Maybe you think through it with your coach.

Maybe you sketch out an org chart, even if your name is in every single box.

Week three, you do a quick review of your numbers.

Just the basics:

•  What did you bring in? 
•  What did you spend? 
•  Where did the calls come from this month? 

Week four, you look at your 90-day window.

What do you want the next three months to look like?

What do you need to do differently to get there?

None of this is overly complicated.

But if you don't protect the time to do it, it just can't happen.

The service calls are always going to be there.

The urgent will always crowd out the important unless you build a structure that says:

This time is not negotiable.

Now here's where it gets even better.

Because right now, that meeting is just you.

You're the business owner, and there's really important value in that. I mean it. The discipline of showing up for that 90 minutes every week is the foundation.

But imagine what happens when you share that time with two or three other business owners who are in a similar place.

That's the goal here.

Start adding other people who are at the same phase of business, who have the same problems, who are also building something, understand the grind, and can look at what you're dealing with and say:

"Here's what I tried that worked."

Or:

"I made that exact mistake six months ago. Let me save you some time."

Or simply:

"I get it. Keep going. It's worth it."

That's what a mastermind actually is.

It's not a class or a lecture.

It's not me talking at you for an hour.

It's a structured conversation between people who are committed to building something, with someone guiding the session who has done this before.

When you're in the right group, 90 minutes every week does not feel like a cost.

It starts to feel like the most valuable hour and a half of your entire week.

Let me tell you a little story about BNI.

BNI stands for Business Networking International, and it's something that Joe and I both joined this year for the first time, mostly because we always felt like we didn't have time.

We were wondering how in the world we were going to carve out 8:00 every Wednesday morning to sit in a room full of people and give our 45-second elevator pitch.

So we put it off.

We just didn't feel like we could sacrifice that in our businesses.

At the time, I was still working full-time for the hospital, and Joe was knee-deep in running Cavalry Appliance, trying to be a manager, run service calls, and do all the things.

Finally, we made time.

We joined BNI, and I can't imagine not having it now.

The relationships we've built in that room are really important.

We've gotten referrals for the businesses.

People actually care about our business and care about helping us.

So that's what happens when you start carving out time to work on your business in these various ways.

Whether it's networking.

Whether it's going to a Chamber of Commerce event and getting your name out there.

Whether it's joining a book club for business owners and meeting other people who are traveling the same path as you.

Or whether it's joining a Camp One Mastermind through Outcome Academy.

When you're in the right group, 90 minutes every week does not feel like a cost.

Like I said, it starts to feel like the most valuable time of your entire week.

So before I let you go today, I want to talk through a mindset shift with you.

The business owner I talked to this morning said they were too busy for 90 minutes a week of strategy.

And I'm absolutely not picking on them.

I understand why that feels true.

But what I want you to hear is this:

You're not too busy.

You're too isolated.

Isolation is what makes the busyness feel unmanageable.

When every single decision lands on you, when there's no one to think out loud with, when you're both the employee and the CEO and the marketer and the admin, it's not just exhausting.

It's inefficient.

You spend mental energy spinning on the same problems week after week because there's no structure for actually solving them.

Strategy is not a luxury reserved for bigger businesses.

It's the thing that makes your business bigger.

And the rhythm of working on your business consistently, intentionally, every single week is the practice that gets you there.

You're not behind.

You've not missed your window.

If you're listening to this, you're someone who is paying attention, and that already puts you ahead of most people.

The question is simply this:

Are you going to give your business the attention it deserves at the strategic level?

Or are you going to keep waiting until things slow down?

Which, I'll tell you right now, they won't.

They will not slow down on their own.

You build the structure, and then you operate inside of it.

Now, after hearing all of that, if the only thing you think you can commit to right now is an appointment with yourself, that is your action item this week.

Pick a day.

Pick a time.

Put it on your calendar.

And protect it.

That is your starting line. 

And if you're ready for more than that, I want to tell you about what I'm building right now.

I'm actively forming Camp One Mastermind groups—real groups with a few business owners who are at a similar stage and who can genuinely learn from each other.

The difficulty comes in trying to form groups from the beginning because everybody's schedule is different.

So I want to put your mind at ease and let you know that if it doesn't work for anybody else, you still have a group.

Your group will simply start out as individual coaching.

That basically means you get a group coaching rate for individual one-on-one coaching.

It's an hour-long session with your coach and about a half hour of time that you're going to commit to actually working on and executing the thing that you told yourself you were going to do that week.

So literally an hour and a half every week devoted to working on your business.

I have found that the hardest part of a mastermind is not the content or the structure.

It's finding the right fit with the right people.

So rather than trying to get everyone into one big group and hoping it works, I'm being very intentional about this.

I'm going to match people with similar styles of business, by schedule, and by where they are in the climb.

And while these groups are forming, while it's just you and me getting your foundation locked in, you're going to get something that normally costs a lot more than a group program price.

Camp One Mastermind members get access to Brand Builder Blueprint, the Compound Marketing Machine, the Business Mountain Framework onboarding, and we build your Monday.com board with you so you can actually have a system to run your business from day one.

It's a complete package.

And I mentioned BNI earlier.

If you happen to be a BNI member, I want to honor that.

Being in BNI means you already believe in relationship-based business and showing up consistently.

And that's exactly the kind of person who does well in a mastermind.

BNI members get 25% off.

I can verify membership through the BNI app, so just mention it when you reach out.

If any of this is speaking to you, go to outcomeacademy.com or reach out to me directly and let's talk about whether this is the right fit and which group makes sense for where you are.

Your outcome is not a wish.

It's a decision.

And I want you to decide to put your business as a priority on your calendar, just like you would put an important relationship as a priority on your calendar.

As you think about this week, notice where this shows up in your own business.

If you want to go deeper into this work, including the mastermind and other ways we support service-based business owners, you can explore everything at outcomeacademy.com.

Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode.